Rece Davis claims conferences comparing games played is 'the dumbest argument of all the arguments'

The offseason is quickly winding down, so the final arguments about college football from a big-picture standpoint are taking place on podcasts and television shows alike. And ESPN’s Rece Davis took the opportunity to tackle a big one when it comes to the differences between conferences.

More precisely, he blasted critics of a certain type. He’s not happy with those that advocate solely for one conference over another based on number of games played.

“In my judgment the dumbest argument of all the arguments between the conferences is number of games played,” Davis said on the College GameDay Podcast. “Now, let me offer this caveat. I’ve told a lot of officials in the SEC, athletics directors, (Greg) Sankey and I have had this conversation.

“I think they should play 10 conference games. I think it’s better for the sport, I think players want to play it, it’s certainly better for television, the court will stipulate to that. But nine versus eight… which nine in the Big Ten? Which eight in the SEC?”

Right now there’s no clear guidelines for evaluating teams that play different numbers of conference games. That’s the main argument behind the push for the SEC to equal the Big Ten at nine games.

But Davis said there’s another solution for the whole thing. Find a way to get on the same page about this and everything else will fall into place.

“What they should do, it should be incumbent on the committee if that’s the way we go or incumbent on any formula we may devise — now I know that may make you shudder to devise a formula in there — but whatever we devise, take the schedule in its entirety,” Davis said.

He outlined why. Basically, one team’s eight-game schedule could be tougher than another team’s nine. Or two nine-game schedules might be completely different based on the conference.

“Because as we’re talking about the SEC, Oklahoma‘s eight-game schedule last year was completely different from Texas‘ eight-game schedule,” Davis said. “Florida‘s was way more difficult than Texas. I would argue that Florida’s and Oklahoma’s eight-game schedule greatly surpassed Indiana‘s nine-game conference schedule.

“So arguing this sheerly on the number of games because of the sizes of these two conferences is a fool’s errand in my judgment. It always, year in and year out, is going to depend on which games.”

If the College Football Playoff selection committee or some type of computer formula can find a way to weight schedules in comparisons, that would help. It would also eliminate some of the gripes about overloading schedules with cupcakes.

It would become much more obvious when a team has scheduled an FCS type opponent for a one-off game, rather than as a significant chunk of the scheduling philosophy. And that matters.

“I also don’t care, if they play a representative schedule, if they play on FCS game,” Davis said. “Jimbo Fisher used to advocate for that because he came from playing at that level and talked about how it helped sustain football. Now nobody wants a steady diet of it, and nobody loves it the week that it happens in November. But I really don’t care if it happens Week 1 or Week 11. I don’t. If you’re playing just one of them, OK.”

Do those things and you’ll have college football in a place where it can be more equitably judged between the conferences, Davis said. He finished:

“The schedule as a whole, all 12 games, whatever it is, a fair measure among all of the conferences, and this argument between eight and nine is foolish in my judgment.”