7 thoughts on “Twitter: Preseason college football …”

  1. trooperbari

    Will we have a similar inquest to SEC Media Days if someone dares vote Florida something other than No. 1?

  2. David K.

    I’d be more interested to see if Florida will dare schedule a decent non-conference opponent, actually that goes for most of the SEC…

  3. Brendan Loy

    What are you talking about, David, Florida is a scheduling juggernaut. In addition to playing Charleston Southern, Troy AND Florida International this year — all at home, of course — Florida already has a variety of challenging opponents lined up for future years, including Miami of Ohio (home) and Appalachian State (home) in 2010, Florida Atlantic (home), UAB (home) and Furman (home) in 2011, Jacksonville State (home) in 2012, and Toledo (home) in 2013. Thank God they schedule ahead… somebody else might have snapped up Jacksonville State and Toledo before the Gators had a chance to line them up for the slaughter, err, schedule!

    (Okay, okay, in fairness, they also do an annual home/away series with Florida State… and I’m glad to see they’ve added South Florida to their schedule in 2010 and 2015… though it would be nice to see them play a ROAD game against USF instead of two home games against ’em.)

    But it’s okay, because the Gators’ conference schedule is a WAR!!! Oh wait, no it isn’t:

    There is no way this team will not win out. They don’t play Alabama, Auburn or Ole Miss. Tennessee is at home. [Georgia is at a neutral site, as always.] … Note too that they get an extra week to prepare for the one semi-tough game, at LSU. The Tigers (who lost three times at home last year) are coming off a game the week before AT GEORGIA.

    Obviously, Florida would have to win the SEC title game against a tough team at a neutral site (Atlanta) to go undefeated. But that means they only have to play TWO of the top teams in the SEC West (LSU and whoever wins the division). Which isn’t their fault, admittedly, but… watch Alabama, Auburn and Ole Miss all be ranked in the Top 10, along with Florida, so the Gators get all sorts of street cred for being in the “toughest conference in the nation,” even though they won’t have played ANY of the other top teams until the championship game. Ugh. (Or better yet, watch Florida lose to LSU, but otherwise win out, end up in a battle of one-loss teams, and get into the national championship game on the strength of the SEC’s reputation their big road wins over… Kentucky and South Caroilna???)

    All I can say is, GOOOOO TROJANS, BEEEEEAT GATORS!!!

  4. David K.

    The SEC will start getting credit with me when the following things happen:

    Their non-con scheduling involves decent to good teams with home AND away matches.
    They drop a couple of teams and do round robin scheduling.
    The stop talking about their conference being a WAR and on par with the NFL.

  5. trooperbari

    One problem with that plan, David. Per NCAA rules, a conference must have 12 teams in order to have a championship game.

    No championship game = less money rolling in = no chance

  6. Brendan Loy

    The problem with the SEC isn’t the lack of round robin scheduling as such. The problem is the unbalanced nature of the schedules, and the fact that division champions are decided by overall conference record instead of intradivision schedules. It makes no sense for an SEC East team with a 6-2 record in conference — 5-0 in the East, with losses vs. the West to Ole Miss and LSU, and a win over Alabama — to lose out to another SEC East team with a 7-1 record — 4-1 in the East (with a loss to the first team in our example), 3-0 vs. its West opponents: Auburn, Arkansas and Mississippi State. The only reason the 6-2 team has a worse record is because they played the tough teams in the West, while the 7-1 team played the patsies.

    If the SEC divisions used intradivision records to determine division champs, with head-to-head as the first tiebreaker, and interdivision games only coming into play when you have a multi-team tie that you can’t settle otherwise, it’d be almost as fair as a round-robin setup.

    Of course, you’d still have the problem of the media thinking the 7-1 team — which would be 11-1 overall because, this being the SEC, its non-conference opponents would inevitably be Florida International, McNeese State, Gonzaga (which hasn’t had a football team since 1942), and Newington High School — should get an automatic spot in the national title game because OMG THEY WENT 11-1 AGAINST AN SEC SCHEDULE!!!!!

  7. David K.

    One problem with that plan, David. Per NCAA rules, a conference must have 12 teams in order to have a championship game.

    No championship game = less money rolling in = no chance

    Its ok, i think the odds of them dropping the championship game are more likely than scheduling decent opponents anyway 🙂

    Personally i think conference championships aren’t that great. Its not much better than what the BCS does (Brendan points out the obvious flaws). Round robin is going to give you the best team in the conference FAR more often.

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