This is what people are trying to get across to you. No one told their asses to go to 9 conference games. The only thing I'm getting from you is that scheduling weaker statistically and perceptionally makes you look stronger. If that's the case, then why the hell do they feel the need to go with 9 conference games? This whole time in this thread, I haven't seen 1 person say the Pac-12 is weak. I'm not naive enough to believe that every person on this board will admit that they're at the most the 2nd best conference, but you're failing to realize is that they're putting themselves in a more disadvantageous situation and getting mad at us for not following them? That sounds dumb as hell.
SEC to play nine?
- Thread starter biteyoudawg
- Start date
you are focusing on the top dogs of the conferences. i'm focusing from the msu and other mid tier POV. utah, washington, cal, etc, look a lot better when they benefit from msu's schedule of 8 conf games and 4 easy non-conference Ws. oregon, usc, and stanford are top 10 teams. <div>Incognegro said:
</div><div>but at the end of the day, I'M NOT ARGUING THE PAC 12 IS BETTER, i'm saying the argument of "WE PLAYED 3 TOP 10 TEAMS AND 5 OR 6 TOP 25 TEAMS AND WHEN THE PAC 12 CAN SAY THAT THEN WE'LL THINKS ABOUT PLAYING A 9 GAME CONFERENCE SCHEDULE" is afaultyargument and thatmathematicallyeasing up the pac 12's schedule to only include 8 conference games and 4 easy non-conference Ws would result in a schedule for mid and lower tier teams that would include 3 top 10 teams and 6 top 25 teams. do you see how that works? every year there are comments about the pac 10/12 not filling bowl slots it seems, but when you automatically take 6 Ws away from the middle and lower tier teams, you are taking away a W that gets a team from 5-7 to 6-6. add in regularly scheduling easy Ws instead of tough non-conference opponents and now you have a 5-7 team that's 7-5 or a a 6-6 team that 8-4 and ranked. suddenly the schedules look tougher due to inflated rankings because washington beat up on idaho and utah st instead of losing to usc and nebraska.</div><div>
</div><div>that's the point i'm making is that the idea that the sec is too tough for a 9 game schedule is relying on faulty logic. the top end of the sec has obviously been the best in the country for 6 years now, but the middle and lower tier of the sec gets a big time boost from inflated records.</div><div>
</div><div>as for overall bowl records, most of our bowls come against the big 10 and acc.</div>
i like good football, watching msu v. memphis 1/3 of the season is not good football.<div>Incognegro said:
</div><div>i wish the FBS would get cut down to 75-80 teams and no more than 1 W against FCS competition would count towards bowl eligibility. then we'd actually see a bunch of great matchups and great football every week, and we'd all be playing 11 respectable games and 1 easy W and we wouldn't have to worry about the integrity of beating up on ****** programs to ensure a bowl bid and it wouldn't feel kinda cheap to get to 6-6 that way. you'd have earned your 6-6 record.
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it will start when another team actually beats the SEC in a BCS title game. The SEC's 8 conference game format doesn't have anything to do with the recent sheer domination in the championship game. Second, if the whole BCS system and SEC schedule truly does rig the system, then fans of other conferences need to start calling out their own commissioners that keep opposing a playoff. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly where the Pac 12 stands on this right now, but I do know that the SEC has been one of the very few conferences to actually voice support of a playoff.
you are using last year's data, with a 12-team Pac-12 and a 12-team SEC. The SEC will be adding 2 more middle-of-the-pack teams in 2012.
Also you are adding OOC losses in, when not all teams in the SEC only play terrible non-BCS opponents OOC, such as Auburn's loss to Clemson, Georgia's loss to Boise State (a really good non-BCS worthy of a BCS conference), Florida's loss to Florida State. And those are just the middle of the pack teams from this year that I could come up with. So that washes out several of your wins.
The people whining about the SEC scheduling should be whining to their own Commissioners, ADs, and Presidents for choosing the 9-game schedule versus the 8-game lineup. They obviously felt the reward of playing another conference game was worth the risk of more losses. There will always be excuses from the other conferences as long as the SEC keeps dominating the BCS.
*Edited to fix number of Pac 12 teams error.*
Also you are adding OOC losses in, when not all teams in the SEC only play terrible non-BCS opponents OOC, such as Auburn's loss to Clemson, Georgia's loss to Boise State (a really good non-BCS worthy of a BCS conference), Florida's loss to Florida State. And those are just the middle of the pack teams from this year that I could come up with. So that washes out several of your wins.
The people whining about the SEC scheduling should be whining to their own Commissioners, ADs, and Presidents for choosing the 9-game schedule versus the 8-game lineup. They obviously felt the reward of playing another conference game was worth the risk of more losses. There will always be excuses from the other conferences as long as the SEC keeps dominating the BCS.
*Edited to fix number of Pac 12 teams error.*
There are plenty of folks out there who do get way to much gratification out of Bama and LSU winning titles because they're from the SEC. A friend of mine is this way, and he went to Memphis. He pulls for the SEC because he lives in the region and enjoys good football. His enthusiasm is a little much seeing as how he didn't go to any SEC school, but there are plenty of people like that all of the country. However, I could care less what we look like to other people in different parts of the country. Blame ESPN for becoming SEC nightly during football season, but don't blame the schools or their fans.dawgs said:
As for MSU, when the Bama's and LSU's dominate, it only makes us look better, not worse, and the current system will continue to help MSU gain national exposure or at least as much as we're ever going to get. You know why you can catch all of our games on ESPN, ESPNU,or ESPN2 ? Because those teams kick *** and we have a sweet TV contract. Thats enough to make me pull for the conference as a whole.
but this past season, the SEC was 6-3 in bowl games while the vastly underrated PAC 12 was 2-5. Now, if the SEC truly was artificially overrated due to "perception" while the PAC 12 wasn't getting the respect it deserved, shouldn't those bowl records be reversed? Hilarious...
which mid-tier pac 10 team beat stanford, usc, or oregon this year? i guess az st beat usc early, but after that? none. that would be like arkansas losing to msu somehow destroying the sec is strong argument. <div>shsdawg said:
</div><div>the "brains beat in" argument is subjective, and oregon and usc, and stanforddemoralizedthe spirit of many a team too. injuries happen in football at all levels. bama might grind you in the ground, but you might pop a hammy trying to catch DAT. and stanford can pound you with the best of them. most of our key injuries happened against a mid tier auburn team this year, not against bama or lsu.</div>
have we not moved past the point of isolating single seasons bowl records and citing them as the utmost authority on who was overrated and underrated? <div>Seinfeld said:
</div><div>in case you missed it, bowls are generally 1 huge party for the players involved unless it's the national title game. and then it's still a huge party if you are jordan jefferson. not a real good measuring stick. make the games mean something and suddenly players aren't out partying all night and picking up girls.</div>
Wins/Losses,strength of schedule, rankings...and any other number to prove a point. Those things are ruining dawgs argument.
the SEC's top teir was the best? Now you are saying that the PAC's top tierdominates their middle teir like the SEC's top tier does it's middle tier. That means that the middle tier of thePAC would have to be worse than the SEC's. Glad to see you agree with us finally. I understand the rest of the country is tired of the SEC. I don't blame them,I would be too. Until they start putting more of their better athletes on defense, and that would probably have to happen at the HS level first, it's going to be tough to catch the SEC. They will eventually, people always imitate success, even if they hate it.
Did you just say that? What do you measureconferences with,tallest coach? best looking uniforms?or justgames they play against each other during the season...and not that party Bowl season where championships are won, coaches are graded by, and players have a whole month to prepare for.dawgs said:
next year there will be 2 more middle-of-the-pack SEC teams competing for the 2 BCS spots, which overall lowers each SEC team's chance to be in a BCS game. Seems like it might not make a difference, but more 10-2 teams may not make the BCS like in year's passed (LSU 2007).
With the way the BCS is currently set up, it's best to schedule smarter, not harder. It's unfortunate from a saturation stand point, but if you're a fan of football, then there's plenty of good games every week regardless if your team is playing or not. I'd much rather MSU have almost guaranteed wins 1/3rd of the season and a need to be competitive for the other 2/3rds instead of a week in week out grind especially with the current state this program is in.<div>
</div><div>Besides, you keep talking about removing the stigma of how others views us... why should any of us really care about that? If you really think about it, us and Ole Miss are really the only teams in the conference that didn't play an OOC AQ-BCS team.</div><div>
</div><div>LSU - Oregon and West Virginia</div><div>Alabama - Penn State</div><div>Auburn - Clemson</div><div>Arkansas - Texas A&M</div><div>
</div><div>Georgia - Georgia Tech</div><div>USCe - Clemson</div><div>Vandy - Wake Forest and UConn</div><div>Florida - Florida State</div><div>Tennessee -Cincinnati</div><div>Kentucky - Louisville</div><div>
</div><div>I only bring this up just to show you how ******** "perception" is. If you ask any Pac-12 homer, they will tell you without a doubt that the entire SEC doesn't schedule other AQ-BCS teams and load up with only cupcakes. How is that even possible when you see that pretty much the whole conference goes against that logic? To take things a step further, I had to leave the fact out that Georgia played Boise St. because they weren't a AQ-BCS team at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>Again... who gives a 17 about how other conferences perceive us? They don't have our best interest in their mind what so ever, so why the hell should we heed any thing that they say? That's just dumb as hell to me.</div>
</div><div>Besides, you keep talking about removing the stigma of how others views us... why should any of us really care about that? If you really think about it, us and Ole Miss are really the only teams in the conference that didn't play an OOC AQ-BCS team.</div><div>
</div><div>LSU - Oregon and West Virginia</div><div>Alabama - Penn State</div><div>Auburn - Clemson</div><div>Arkansas - Texas A&M</div><div>
</div><div>Georgia - Georgia Tech</div><div>USCe - Clemson</div><div>Vandy - Wake Forest and UConn</div><div>Florida - Florida State</div><div>Tennessee -Cincinnati</div><div>Kentucky - Louisville</div><div>
</div><div>I only bring this up just to show you how ******** "perception" is. If you ask any Pac-12 homer, they will tell you without a doubt that the entire SEC doesn't schedule other AQ-BCS teams and load up with only cupcakes. How is that even possible when you see that pretty much the whole conference goes against that logic? To take things a step further, I had to leave the fact out that Georgia played Boise St. because they weren't a AQ-BCS team at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>Again... who gives a 17 about how other conferences perceive us? They don't have our best interest in their mind what so ever, so why the hell should we heed any thing that they say? That's just dumb as hell to me.</div>
wouldn't even dream of swapping their 9-game conference schedule+ 3"tough" non-conference games for our 8-game conference schedule + 4 "easy" non-conference games.
BTW, here's the "tough" games those 3 schools played:
Fresno St.
Presbyterian
Eastern Washington
Hawaii
Nebraska
Montana St.
BYU
None of those games is anywhere near as tough as the5 we played in our ownconference last year. Hell, only Nebraska is tougher than the 6th best SEC team we played. Those 3 schools played a total of only 6 ranked teams all year combined. We played that many ourselves.
BTW, here's the "tough" games those 3 schools played:
Fresno St.
Presbyterian
Eastern Washington
Hawaii
Nebraska
Montana St.
BYU
None of those games is anywhere near as tough as the5 we played in our ownconference last year. Hell, only Nebraska is tougher than the 6th best SEC team we played. Those 3 schools played a total of only 6 ranked teams all year combined. We played that many ourselves.
you can't say that you are a homer for another conference and follow it by saying people shouldn't be homers of a different conference.dawgs said:
also, i think we all understand that fans of everyother conference hate the SEC's success over the last decade. that happens to everyone on top. how much did all the SEC fans hate USC when they were in back to back title games? when that happened there were plenty of PAC10 fans pulling for USC just like there are SEC fans pulling for Bama/LSU. give it a rest. this situation isn't unique.
did i say that every goddamn game was tough? no i didn't. i've never said msu should play 4 tough non-conference games either. i've always said 1 bcs conference non-conference game against a mid to lower tier bcs conference program.
but if you look at how i broke it down, i'm saying IF, and yes that requires using some imagination, washington were to play 8 conference games, say dropping usc from the south and drop nebraska from their non-conference schedule, and replaced those 2 games with idaho and utah st (THE EXACT TYPE OF SCHEDULE MSU PLAYS AND YALL LOVE), then washington is suddenly a 9-3 team. AND, to borrow the "beating the brains in" argument, playing 2 less good teams, washington would likely have been healthy later in the year and not blown the oregon st game.
take out nebraska and 3 conference games, add in 4 idahos, and you have 4 more Ws to split between utah, washington, and cal. they would be more highly ranked and everyone would be talking about 8 with cal and 9 win utah and washington.
utah, cal and washington weren't gonna beat oregon, stanford, or usc, much like msu wasn't gonna beat bama, lsu, or ark. uga was overrated and benefited from playing no one between week 2 and lsu in the sec cg. and it showed.
but if you look at how i broke it down, i'm saying IF, and yes that requires using some imagination, washington were to play 8 conference games, say dropping usc from the south and drop nebraska from their non-conference schedule, and replaced those 2 games with idaho and utah st (THE EXACT TYPE OF SCHEDULE MSU PLAYS AND YALL LOVE), then washington is suddenly a 9-3 team. AND, to borrow the "beating the brains in" argument, playing 2 less good teams, washington would likely have been healthy later in the year and not blown the oregon st game.
take out nebraska and 3 conference games, add in 4 idahos, and you have 4 more Ws to split between utah, washington, and cal. they would be more highly ranked and everyone would be talking about 8 with cal and 9 win utah and washington.
utah, cal and washington weren't gonna beat oregon, stanford, or usc, much like msu wasn't gonna beat bama, lsu, or ark. uga was overrated and benefited from playing no one between week 2 and lsu in the sec cg. and it showed.
i already said anyone arguing the sec doesn't play decent OOC programs is full of ****. numerically speaking, the sec plays roughly the same number of BCS and ranked non-BCS non-conference as the acc and big 12, and more than the big 10. the pac 10/12 plays the most AND plays 9 conference games. that affects the records and lends itself to comments like "well oregon didn't play 6 ranked teams like we did".Incognegro said:
the only championship won during bowl season is the nationalchampionship. and i already put that caveat in there while simultaneously taking a shot at jordan jefferson who supposedly partied so much leading up to the game that the other players begged lesticles to bench him and play lee.Hector said:
<div>
</div><div>but here's a little secret for you, the rest of the bowls are rarely nothing more than a big party for the players. they don't prep for the games like their lives depended on it. they go out on the town, they go to bowl events, they stay in swanky hotels, they get gifts from the bowls, they eat too much, they generally enjoy themselves. now that's not 100% the case, like the rose bowl was a pretty intense game this year (oregon wanted to break the rose bowl streak, and wisco was looking to avenge last year's tcu loss), but the las vegas bowl? the sugar bowl? the music city bowl? the peach bowl? the orange bowl? those kids were on vacation.</div>
Ok. So you agree with me on those people being full of **** if they say that the SEC doesn't play a decent OOC slate. Well, those are the same people that you're sticking up for when they say that the conference as a whole should go the 9 conference game route. That's the same exact point the dude that wrote that article is saying. He used us as a prime example as to why the SEC should have 9 conference games because we all load up on cupcakes which we don't. And yet, you're defending these same full of **** people and agreeing with that same point which is baseless. No one is telling the Pac-12 to play 9 conference games and it's their fault if their schedule hurts their perception which you seem to really care about.
Why should we fix something that's not broken? I understand the inherent differences between 8 vs 9 for SOS, but the other conferences can switch to 8 or quit bitching. Nobody is forcing them to play 9.
2 divisions, 8 games, and a championship game achieves its purpose just fine. The only problem I have with the current setup is that the East has an easier path to the SEC championship game. However, that's only temporary and wouldn't be resolved by adding a ninth to the schedule when we expand next year.
If your conference can't figure out how to crown a champion with just 8 regular season games, you get no sympathy from me. The other conferences have the problem, it's up to them to address it, not the SEC. I'm going to be pissed if the SEC caves on this.
2 divisions, 8 games, and a championship game achieves its purpose just fine. The only problem I have with the current setup is that the East has an easier path to the SEC championship game. However, that's only temporary and wouldn't be resolved by adding a ninth to the schedule when we expand next year.
If your conference can't figure out how to crown a champion with just 8 regular season games, you get no sympathy from me. The other conferences have the problem, it's up to them to address it, not the SEC. I'm going to be pissed if the SEC caves on this.
folks can be both right on some points and wrong on others. he didn't say all the sec plays **** non-conference schedules, he said msu is playing **** non-conference schedules, and that we are being considered a bowl team despite going 2-6 in conference. he's saying that 9 conference games would at least require 3 conference Ws and 1 less gimme W in the non-conference, this is an absolute true statement. and with the consolidation of conferences, pretty much every other major conference going to 9 conference games, AND the pac12/big 10 coming to an agreement to play each other out of conference, the sec isn't going to have a lot of options to maintain a good non-conference schedule, even for the schools looking to beef up the non-conference schedule - this is also a true inference, because as you reduce the number of games available for non-conference play and increase the number of teams in the conference, you are starting to limit the non-conference options quickly.
the guy didn't say a single thing factually incorrect. more conference games does decrease the total number of victories your conference can accrue and make it more difficult to make a bowl game.
the guy didn't say a single thing factually incorrect. more conference games does decrease the total number of victories your conference can accrue and make it more difficult to make a bowl game.