Cupcakes and Controversy: Oregon vs. the SEC’s Week of Rest

It’s November and time is quickly running out to secure a spot in the College Football Playoff. Teams are jockeying, politicking and doing just about anything they can to gain whatever leverage to ensure a seat at the table before the music runs out.

While some teams are in the midst of playing for their post season lives against ranked opponents, others are taking a week off to rest their stars and prepare for their final regular season game of the year.

After #7 Oregon defeated the #15 USC Trojans 42-27 at Autzen Stadium on Saturday, Dan Lanning fired a shot over the bow of the SEC and he ruffled a few feathers in the process.

SEC Cupcake Week

A lot of Power 4 teams play FCS or Group of 5 opponents during the year, but they do it early in the season. That’s not in question. They usually serve as a warmup or a preseason for teams to work things out. But those games are usually in the first three weeks of the year. The SEC has been scheduling these cupcake teams in late November for years, with no penalty from the rankings or committees.

To the contrary, Ole Miss jumped Oregon in the playoff rankings the week they beat FCS powerhouse The Citadel 49-0. Who did Oregon play that week? #20 Iowa in Iowa City… in the pouring rain.

Iowa is no longer ranked after losing to Oregon and USC, but what can you do?

“A lot of times we play really good teams that become unranked all of a sudden. That’s not our fault, right? Maybe it is our fault,” said Lanning. “This conference is a really good conference. It’s competitive, right? We didn’t play Chattanooga State today, right? Like some other places, right? We competed. So that being said, it’s tough playing nine conference games. It’s tough playing in this league. And we got to take advantage of playing a good team today and attacking that.”

Not About Who You Play, it’s About When You Play Them

Lanning wasn’t saying that Oregon doesn’t play FCS schools. He wasn’t questioning the practice of power 4 teams playing weaker schools in general. Oregon schedules FCS teams and they ended up playing a very weak Out of Conference (OOC) schedule this year.

No, Lanning wasn’t comparing overall strength of schedule at all. He was calling out the practice of scheduling these weak teams in late November when teams are banged up, playing other conference opponents in the Big Ten or the ACC or Big 12, while the SEC is playing some of the worst FCS teams in the country.

Wouldn’t Oregon like to play one of the worst teams in the country late in the season so they can get healthy and rest their key guys? It’s hard to do that when you’re playing Iowa or Minnesota or USC. Their last game of the season is against Washington on the road. That’s going to be a war, whether Washington is ranked or unranked.

Why Does this Matter to Oregon?

In one respect it benefits Oregon that they played the #15 team in the country. We are waiting on the release of the updated playoff ranking on Tuesday, but this win should boost Oregon’s resume and possibly move them up in the ranking.

The Ducks are also extremely beat up right now. They’re missing their top three wide receivers (Evan Stewart, Dakorien Moore, and Gary Bryant Jr.) and they ended up losing two of their starting offensive linemen against the Trojans.

Starting Left tackle Isaiah World played limited snaps off the bench and starting center Iapani Laloulu went down in the middle of the game with a lower leg injury.

Left tackle and center are the two most critical positions on the O line and Oregon had to use players who had barely seen the field this season. They started redshirt freshman Fox Crader at left tackle and Charlie Pickard at center when Poncho went down. Those two players combined for 104 total snaps all season, with 33 for Crader and 71 for Pickard.

They both played extremely well under the circumstances, but how much would it have helped Oregon to be playing Charlotte or Samford instead of USC?

Not all FCS Teams are Created Equal

This just highlights the absurdity of the cupcake week even further. These teams that the SEC faced aren’t even good FCS or G5 teams. They’re some of the worst teams in all of college football. Samford is 1-10 this season and #3 Texas A&M crushed them 48-0.

#4 Georgia played Charlotte at home and won 35-3. The 49ers are 1-10 this season and ESPN has them as the third worst team in FP+ at -21.7 on the season. #10 Alabama played Eastern Illinois, another FCS powerhouse with a 3-9 record this year. The Crimson Tide won 56-0.

Oregon played an FCS team too, right? Sure, they played Montana State back in week 1 of the season, which was Lanning’s whole point. They played them at the start of the season and not in late November.

With that said, that’s the same Montana State who is 10-2 and ranked #3 in the FCS top 25. They also just beat the #2 Montana team in the Brawl of the Wild. Montana State is currently ranked 50^th on the Sagarin ratings. That’s above Mississippi State (53), Tulane (54) and Virginia Tech (71).  

Some Things You Can Control, Some You Can’t

There is a big difference between scheduling an FCS team that you know won’t have a roster composition even close to yours, and an FBS team from a power 4 conference. Those games are usually scheduled years in advance, and it’s completely out of the control of a team like Oregon in determining how good that team ends up being by the time they play.

Oklahoma State has been horrible this year. The Ducks beat the Cowboys 69-3 in the second week of the season. Oklahoma State is currently the 132^nd best team in the Sagarin ratings and 115^th in ESPN’s FP+.

They haven’t been doing Oregon any favors in strength of schedule, but there’s not much the Ducks could do about that. They scheduled Ok State back in November of 2018. At that time the Cowboys were fresh off a season where they finished 9-3 and won a bowl game over Virginia Tech.

Civil War Conundrum

Oregon also played Oregon State this season, and this matchup is tricky. There are a lot of bad feelings about the Ducks leaving the PAC12 and OSU being left behind to fend for themselves.

Oregon State is 2-9 this season, they fired their coach, and things look pretty bleak up in Corvallis. Playing the Ducks is a no-win situation for either team. It doesn’t help Oregon to win these games, as it hurts their SOS. Meanwhile Oregon State gets stomped by their in-state rival. If Oregon loses, it could kill their season.

There also doesn’t seem to be a lot of fans on either side who want to maintain the rivalry, but there’s a lot of pressure politically to continue the Civil War because of the legacy. The two schools agreed to resume the rivalry in 2027.

Will This be the Last Year of the Cupcake Week?

It was reported back in August that the SEC is adding a ninth conference game to their schedule in 2026. This is in addition to the other scheduling requirements that the SEC puts on their teams, which is that they are “still required to schedule at least one additional high-quality nonconference opponent from the ACC, Big Ten or Big 12 conferences or Notre Dame each season.”

The Big Ten does not currently require their schools to schedule a power 4 opponent in their OOC, so that could play a part in future rankings. Will the B1G follow suit? We will have to wait and see. The Big Ten would benefit greatly from some of their cellar dweller schools turning things around. It also didn’t help that Penn State had a horrible year (5-6) and Wisconsin is continuing to struggle (4-7).