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The Big-10, like the SEC, had 4 OOC games each. From a cursory glance it looks like they made a little more effort to play some tougher games out of conference.
Michigan: Alabama, Notre Dame (2 losses)
Northwestern: Vanderbilt, Syracuse?
Michigan State: Notre Dame (loss), Boise State. Boise state did not beat anyone good this year except possibly BYU (7-6), and might not be that good right now.
Ohio State: (none)
Penn State (none)
Wisconsin: Oregon State (loss), Utah State
Purdue: Notre Dame (loss)
It's really not much better than the SEC. What happened is that Notre Dame decided not to suck bad this year, and they seem to be a de facto Big-10 member.
Edit: Notre Dame only played those 3 Big-10 teams, but they also played 2 from the Pac-12 and 3 from the ACC.
In the old days they would always play Michigan, Michigan ST, Purdue, USC, Stanford, Pitt, Navy, Penn State and one other service academy. That gets you to 9 games leaving 2 to 3 games for other opponents which usually went to a Florida and or Texas team and BYU or Boston College.
They also had Boston College, BYU, and Miami. Apparently not much has changed.
The last team they had this year was Wake Forest.
Edit: I see Penn State joined in 1990.
Notre Dame and Penn St entered into an agreement to play each other each year from 1981 to 1994. That arrangement ended because Penn State joined the Big Ten and so the agreement was cut short after the 1992 season though ND wanted to continue the rivalry.
Now there are some teams (*couch* Mississippi State *cough*) that have a rivalry with an in-conference team and make no effort to schedule a decent OOC team. I think you can make a case that these teams deserve our scorn.
There is no particular reason to give Notre Dame credit for that beyond the fact that going undefeated is always impressive, no matter who you play.
Edit: no top 10s have significantly EASIER schedules except Georgia and Alabama! But that should change after they play each other, so maybe it will even out a bit).
(Ohio State too, but I didn't count them)
In the 80's when I was growing up the teams they played were virtually set in stone every single year and a bunch them were really good teams. Most of those teams they still play to this day and most of those teams are still pretty good. Having said that Oklahoma and Wake Forest are not traditional opponents for ND and they haven't played BYU since 2005 and I believe they haven't played Miami in a non bowl game since 1990.
Just glancing at some old Nebraska OOC schedules from the 80s (Iowa, Auburn, Florida State, Penn State in 1981 OOC) those days are so over. Nebraska would definitely play a dog #### I-A team in most seasons, but I don't think they went *FCS until 2005 when most others followed suit thanks to the 12 game schedule (sans USC, UCLA and ND).
don't forget a number of these 'power schools' were Independent as late as the mid 90s.
edit: I think Nebraska played Middle Tenn St. in '92 cuz somebody backed out, I can't remember who, wasn't a power program, I think colo st, which came back in '96.
In the end though, it has only put them on a par (or still perhaps just slightly below) with teams from the (currently) "good" conferences: Big-12, Pac-12, SEC. Replace Oklahoma with Army and the schedule would be relatively easy.
Edit: I deleted Oklahoma the first time somehow
They don't normally play a team the caliber of Oklahoma in addition to their normal slate of games. They should get some credit for that, particularly because it was on the road.
EDIT: Cokes, but I just finished mine.
Agreed, but, and I'm going to sound like an SEC fanboy for this, ugh, Georgia and Alabama's regular opponents happen to be pretty bad this year. Criticize their out of conference schedule all you want (it deserves it), but it's a down year, to say the least, for Auburn, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Arkansas and Missouri. It's not their fault those teams which are usually at least respectable all stink. 4 of them fired their coach and a fifth canned a coordinator in-season. Twelve months ago those schedules looked a lot better than they do now.
I was going to say that I thought Nebraska played some none Division 1-A team in the 90's but couldn't remember which year and against whom.
I seem to recall in the 80's and at least in the early 90's quite a few Division 1-A teams would play a game against a none Div 1-A. I'm not saying they would do it every year and it would happen 112 times a year but I seem to recall about a dozen or so mid tier Div 1-A teams playing out of division teams each year. Plus wasn't it more common to happen for the bottom rung teams back then as well?
Yeah, Notre Dame is back now.
This, the SEC needs to move to 9 conference games. Unfortunately they put it off for another season. And guess what! Alabama gets to miss the current "big 3" again in the SEC East. But if you move to 9 conference games you hopefully lose that FCS game.
I like the way Alabama schedules besides the FCS opponent. Big marquee game early in the year-though 2013's big marquee opponent fell apart this season-part of the issue of scheduling games sometimes, 2 non-BCS teams, I just wish they replaced that FCS game with a lower-type BCS team (like when they played Duke)....
And as someone else said-major BCS teams want 7 home games, making it harder to schedule non-conference games.
This-Arkansas was a top 10 team supposedly. Tennessee, Auburn, and Missouri were all suppose to be bowl caliber teams. In Missouri's case I think injuries took a toll on there season (QB, OL). Auburn just quit. Tennessee-no defense.
They don't deserve blame for their schedule turning out much easier than expected, that's not on them. However, they also don't deserve credit for playing a tough schedule, b/c they didn't.
Hmmm, I thought Bama-WVU was in 2014.
1. The MNC will be similar to 2006, with ND playing the part of OSU.
2. You, #######, are not going to play in any of the games. Your use of the universal "we" is pathetic.
Part of the reason the SEC schedules weaker OOC opponents is because to get through the SEC Championship game with just one win is nigh friggin' impossible.
When did Mizzou's QB and O-line go down? Before or after the UGA game? If they played against the good QB, does the SOS arguments account for the fact that the Mizzou team to start the year was better by degrees than the Mizzou team is now?
Well that is another one. We got Virginia Tech in 2013 though.
Better hope it's not OSU in 2002.
Is this an attempted swing at me? Because if so, it's really fantastically stupid.
Complaining about the SEC getting a representative this year is pretty silly. The 1 loss team with the hardest schedule is clearly Florida. By the time Alabama beats Georgia in the SEC championship game, their schedule difficulty might not be too far behind Oregon and Kansas State.
Argue the "best" all you want. The deepest is not up for debate. The SEC has six teams in the top 12 of the polls? Congratulations. The rest of the SEC's record against those six teams: 0-30. Not a single win by the bottom eight teams in the SEC against the top six.
Yeah, I'd have never guessed you were in the tank. Regardless, you have never played a single day for any Notre Dame athletic program. It's just pathetic wishcasting on your part to use the universal "we."
I've merely stated the pretty obvious fact that ND isn't nearly as good as nutter fan-boys like you think they are.
Is anyone really arguing SEC depth this year? This entire article is a case of straw-manning.
Michigan, then VT, then WVU... that's a bad turn of fortunes of the marquee OOC for Bama.
This seems like a pretty stupid and petty argument to have.
It looks to me like the computer rating systems have the 2 conferences at a virtual tie this year for overall "best", which I assume is a measure of average conference strength.
What does "Deepest" even mean? Most well balanced, top to bottom? That is not the same as overall best. To most people, "best" is some measure of AVERAGE conference strength, with actually some small amount of bonus points for being top heavy (after all, what people are looking for are great teams, not a bunch of slightly above average ones).
In other words, most well balanced, without being best on average, is really nothing to brag about.
Both the Big-12 and the SEC are excellent conferences this year, just balanced slightly differently.
Your right I never did play for them, but when did I claim that I did?
FWIW: Sargin has WVU ranked 31st (42 predictor, 21 ELO_CHESS) which would put them in the top half of the SEC, ACC, B10, BE, and on down the list of "lesser" conference. Yet they are precisely the 8/10 in the B12.
Not a great team by any stretch, but not a bad team either.
Edit: the SEC team that played two was Texas A&M, and one of the two was Sam Houston State, which is actually decent.
2nd Edit: and the Big-12 team that played none was Texas. Texas A&M and Texas ended up with schedules very similar in strength.
That's what "we" means, son.
Huh. I was just giving the ND fan-boys benefit of the doubt and assuming Buffalo was a FCS school, but turns out, nope.
It means you align your identity with an entity that you have no relationship with, because you prefer to live vicariously through the accomplishments of others.
You can't turn Georgia's schedule into something more than it was. They played two very good teams. They got hammered by one of them. When Vandy's your second-best win, you haven't exactly run any gauntlet. Georgia's schedule, to date, is not comparable to Notre Dame's. It simply isn't, even if you apply that SEC math to make yourself feel better.
When UGA gets waxed by Bama, its 2012 slate will be more impressive, but the Dawgs themselves will be less so.
I'm not trying to. I haven't argued much about UGA's schedule. I've mostly argued that ND's schedule wasn't nearly as tough as the fan-boys make it out to be. I don't see a lot of difference between beating Pitt and beating UK.
I assume they touched you inappropriately.
Dude; internet. If we reserved the fights for things worth fighting about we'd all be doing work right now.
I do have a relationship with ND
I assume they touched you inappropriately.
Not quite, though now we know what you hate ND the priests wouldnt touch as a kid and now your jealous eh
WV is two points away from being 8-3 in the Big 12. They would probably have a better record in every other conference, maybe not the PAC-12, since they would do just fine against patsies. They get their first joke game since conference play started this week.
31 sounds right, and maybe that's not good, but I think they could have easily been better this year.
If I really hated Notre Dame I'd suggest that you were a graduate and that this was their level of academic turnout.
Plus ca change ...
Oh, and by the way, the playoff isn't going to change any of this, it's only going to worsen it -- look at the "Number 3" and "Number 4" teams in the polls. Utterly predictable.
004 Florida
010 South Carolina
029 Vanderbilt
033 Ole Miss
043 Missouri
054 Tennessee
063 Georgia Tech
084 Auburn
092 Kentucky
099 Georgia South
127 Florida Atl
135 Buffalo
008 Stanford
009 Oklahoma
016 USC
020 Michigan
037 BYU
039 Michigan State
052 Miami
062 Purdue
066 Pittsburgh
073 Navy
113 Wake Forest
121 Boston College
It's a good schedule, better than several good SEC teams (Bama and Ga.), worse than others (Fla., LSU and A&M). The most commendable thing about the Irish schedule is that it generally doesn't include any true patsies or blatant money grab games - FCS schools or bottom-rung mid-majors - with the exception of Army when the Golden Knights are on ND's schedule). And, more important, ND went through that good schedule unbeaten, which is something none of the others did.
The ND fanboys (of which there's only one here) haven't made nearly as many preposterous statements in this thread as you have.
a) Wake had a couple of good years around a time when Notre Dame did not.
b) Wake gained a president who had spent his career at Notre Dame, moving up the academic ranks.
c) Wake looked to the future and thought it would need a landmark OOC opponent but, preferably, one that wasn't strong.
d) ND thought it needed to dial down the level a bit without it looking like they were.
Match made in heaven. It's worked out well for one of them.
Georgia will lose to Alabama and drop out of the 4 team picture. It would then be Notre Dame vs Oregon and Alabama vs Florida. If not for tattoos Ohio State would be in there somewhere after they beat Nebraska.
And still not as good as Florida's, I'd imagine.
Of course, after you drop Alabama on the top of that list, you're looking at a 2-loss Georgia team and no one will care all that much about the strength of their schedule. There's nothing that improves a schedule's strength quicker than losing.
No one has suggested that Alabama isn't a well earned favorite in the SEC championship.
31 sounds right, and maybe that's not good, but I think they could have easily been better this year.
They also only beat Maryland who was playing a true freshman at QB by 10 points while allowing MD to score 21 points, beat Texas by a FG in a game in which Texas missed a FG and had WVU turn around and score a TD after the missed FG in the 4th quarter, and beat Iowa St by a TD, a TD they got to take the lead in the 4th Q with 6 minutes to play.
One could also argue that WVU was a bounce or two away from going 3-8 or we could simply leave them at their record and say the bounces evened out.
Of course, it depends on who is doing the rankings. Sagarin's "pure points" rating actually has Georgia South as 86th. On the other hand, Peter Wolfe, the only other of the BCS poll rankings that publishes FCS rankings as well, has Georgia South at 125th, one spot below Boston College.
I think it's safe to say Georgia South is not very good, but they are as good as the other worst teams on most schedules, and should not be singled out.
They were in control of the Maryland game the whole way, but yeah, that wasn't a great performance. They were A LOT of bounces away from losing that game.
They were up ten and Texas scored a TD with ~10-20 seconds left. Texas never had the ball with an opportunity to tie it at the end. And WV also missed a field goal.
The Iowa St. game was a seven point victory that ended with WV controlling the ball. They way outgained Iowa St. and the only reason it was close is because the team had 107 penalty yards, including a two personal foul calls that set up their last score. It was close, but a lot would have had to go right for Iowa St. at the end of the game for them to win.
One could also argue that WVU was a bounce or two away from going 3-8 or we could simply leave them at their record and say the bounces evened out.
Well, not honestly. Two points /= 10. Maryland was never a game they were in danger of losing. Their wins over Iowa St and Texas were far more convincing that their losses to Oklahoma (OU goes up 1 with 20 seconds left by converting on fourth down) and TCU (2 OT by one point).
WV is who their records says they are. They are a sloppy team with a shitty defense. But they are clearly capable of playing with the best teams in the deepest conference in the country and the bounces it would take for them to be 8-3 are a lot less in number than it would for them to be 3-8 (or 4-7 if you wanted to make a reasonable point). And they would be competitive in every conference in the country.
Georgia/Notre Dame schedule rank by poll
Sagarin: 42/30
And&Hest;: 34/30
Billingsley (does not say, but unlike Sagarin, has SEC as toughest conference)
Colley: 51/15
MAssey: 31/17
Wolfe: (also does not say, but has SEC as significantly best conference)
They were up ten and Texas scored a TD with ~10-20 seconds left. Texas never had the ball with an opportunity to tie it at the end. And WV also missed a field goal.
This issue isn't what could have happened at the very end but that the game was a bounce or two away in the 4th quarter from turning a tossup instead of a win for WVU.
Well, not honestly. Two points /= 10. Maryland was never a game they were in danger of losing. Their wins over Iowa St and Texas were far more convincing that their losses to Oklahoma (OU goes up 1 with 20 seconds left by converting on fourth down) and TCU (2 OT by one point).
You're ignoring why the MD was never in danger of being lost. Part of that reason is because of the QB situation in MD and their wins against Iowa ST and Texas may have been more convincing than their close losses but that doesn't change the fact that WVU could have easily lost both those games and possibly the MD game had things happened just a little bit differently.
Which is the point. WVU is not a very good team that leaves no doubt. They are a team in which a bounce here or there can swing a game one way or the other and it appears you understand that so I'm not really sure what the issue is here. A mediocre team with lots of luck all season long fluking into a 8-3 record doesn't make them a good team this year.
I'm not sure what the touche actually addresses. Pitt is probably a better team than GSU.
UGA cake walked over GSU. ND needed the morning doves of the Lord to away from Pitt (at home) alive.
Well, Pitt was only in that situation because the morning doves of the Lord caused ND to have second and goal from the half yard line and come away with zero points due to a fumble. I think that's statistically more unlikely than missing a thirty-something yard field goal at the college level.
Anyway, the Irish out-gained Pitt by 214 yards and had 20 more first downs (margins greater than the Georgia vs. Georgia Southern matchup, btw). Pitt enjoyed the lion's share of the luck that afternoon.
This is the weird thing about Sam's argument. Are you going to go with pitcher wins next, Sam?
No, but I sure as #### will take real results over run differential.
So you cherry pick the computer rankings and tell me what I'm thinking? That's the better way?
This has been pretty much my point from the beginning. ND won all of their games, beat several tough teams that could have been playing for the national championship if it wasn't for ND, and are in the same boat as all the other "best teams" in the NCAA when it comes to schedule and such. Just because they don't have a flashy offense doesn't mean they can't hang with the other "best teams" as ND as proven numerous times this season.
Heck, the Bears in 2006 had an average to slightly below mediocre offense but went all the way to the Super Bowl because of their defense and special teams.
And their conference was super crappy. That helped considerably.
I never cherry-picked the rankings. Not once. I gave you all the relevant info from them, leaving out nothing. Feel free to disagree with them, but if all you can do is say that they are wrong because of some cherry-picked ########, your response is worthless.
By the way, I think both Georgia and Notre Dame are fairly weak. I think Oregon, Stanford, Alabama, Florida, and possibly Kansas State would all be better, and you can probably throw in some other SEC, Pac-12, and Big-12 teams as well. That was not the point of my posts.
The way the college system is currently set up, the teams that have a shot at the title right now are the ones that most deserve it. Notre Dame is undefeated, and either Georgia/Alabama will win their excellent conference, which is something that Oregon failed to do. The only potential limited gripe I can see is that Kansas State might also win their excellent conference with one loss. To that I can only say that at least Georgia's blow out loss was to a top 10 team.
Really? You haven't carped on the "run differential" in the ND/Pitt game about twenty times do far in this thread?
Well, every division in the NFC that year was "super crappy". Division winners besides the Bears were 10-6 and 9-7 and the only non-division winning team in the NFC with a winning record was the Cowboys at 9-7.
Hence, the "conference was super crappy."
What's hilarious is that I'm not a Georgia fan. I'm the opposite of that, in fact.
Notre Dame isn't the 2006 Bears. They're the 2010 Falcons.
Not really. Is English your second language or something?
That is pretty rich. Fine, I'll change it to blind non-Alabama SEC homer. Every single non-Alabama SEC team has either a weak schedule or a few results that you look ugly.
And you certainly make a cogent argument defending your second point.
Pretty much the best argument for ND belonging in the title game is that, as of today, if they weren't in it, Georgia would be the next team taken.
This is me. Look closely.
can only be taken a couple ways, and they're all pretty similar.
2. Home field advantage is real, especially in college sports.
3. Travelling west to east exacerbates home field advantage in South Bend.
4. ND hasn't actually beaten Stanford on the merits. It's still tied after one overtime.
2/3 - Home field advantage being real doesn't make up the huge difference in talent between Mizzou and Stanford. This is like saying (name your league-average starting pitcher who plays for a team in a hitter's park) is as good as Matt Cain because the latter plays in a great pitcher's park. It's not something to be ignored, but being at home doesn't suddenly make just any team a good one, and going on the road doesn't suddenly make a top 10 team a mediocre one.
4 - here
Very close, but it looks like the elbow is down, and there certainly is no evidence that actually got in. The "the ref should have called this instead of that" game is the last resort of a lost argument. Instead of advancing the discussion, it's a ploy to say "every opinion is equal, so who knows". Besides I thought you said you were the one arguing to look at "real results".
Look for Manti Te'o to lead the Irish to victory!
And he only threw 9 passes against Vanderbilt, the backup threw 30.
That said, Stanford is and was better than Missouri.
No one has argued otherwise.
http://masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm - Massey ratings compilation, a huge sample size, which all appear to use margin of victory, has ND #1. Case closed.
Let me clarify. Stanford is so much better than Missouri that beating Stanford at home > beating Missouri on the road.
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