when the southern miss game was scheduled they were 12-2....the next season, they proceeded to go 0-12 and 1-11 this year. there is no real way we could have seen that coming. we need a warm up game, another for sure win, a likely win against a better cusa or mac team, and a winnable (pick-em at worst) major conference team (iowa state, kansas, wake forest, rutgers, etc). when we are starting with a base top 30 or top 25 SOS, i simply dont see the point in making us a top 10 SOS at the expense of probable losses. thats not how you dig yourself out of the type hole we are in (being a traditional lower tier sec team with a sub .500 record). as bad as that sounds, we need to be reminded from time-to-time and check the ego before we schedule another bcs bowl participant or dark-horse national title contender (oklahoma state, oregon, west virginia all come to mind as teams that we should have never scheduled). the counter argument is always, when we play better competition, we will in-turn get better, but after getting our brains beaten in year after year after year in the premier conference in the nation, i am failing to see how we are closing the gap. i wouldnt mind us scheduling that type of team when we have things in place where we can expect a legitimate shot at a competitive game, but we arent there yet. lets continue to grow, dont overwhelm the schedule, play within ourselves and continue to build the foundation.
