[wvuauthor]

What does everybody think about strength of schedule and how it should effect who does what, and the BCS standings? If we ever see a playoff will sos still matter?

[Lefty Noob]

Not officially, but it's always in the mind of the human voters, coaches or otherwise.

[cjg11582]

It is in the back of everyone's mind, but I think voters have a lot of misconceptions about what constitutes a difficult schedule. If we look at the 2004 season, Auburn had a much more challenging season than Oklahoma and USC. But it wasn't recorded that way in the BCS formula. Since one loss can knock a team out of national title contention, The BCS is much heavier weighted on losses rather than wins. And potential losses are what should be factored into the BCS formula more so than anything else regarding strength of schedule.
But since Auburn had a rather lackluster non conference season (played two 1-AA teams I think), this counted against them. Despite the fact they beat Tennesee twice, LSU, Alabama and Georgia. All of which were top ten teams. This is a very impressive feat.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma beat one top ten team (Texas) and one other ranked team (Oklahoma State at #20). USC only beat Cal at #7 and ASU at #19 (Though they did beat Va Tech in the first game of the season, who was unranked at the time but managed to make the BCS, so I recognize this as a quality win as well). Outside of these two hurdles for OU and three for USC, both teams coasted to an undefeated record. Which should be acknowledged.
Essentially, when there are three teams of this caliber vying for national title game invites, I don't think playing Bowling Green instead of LA Tech should make any difference, because neither Auburn nor Oklahoma are going to lose either of those games. But evaluating the quantity of potential losses bested should be the main consideration when determining strength of schedule.

[wvuauthor]

I am wondering how all of this is going to play out with the new 12 game schedule. Some teams are simply going to be forced to play lesser teams; and in many cases I-AA-dont you agree?

[cjg11582]

I think it will become more prevalant. Admittedly, the SEC already plays several 1-AA teams every year (The worst being when Miss. St. lost to Maine, which indirectly hurt the BCS standing of every team in The SEC) and very few stellar non-conference opponents as a means to compensate for a uniquely challenging conference schedule.
If and when a playoff comes to fruition, the surplus of 1-AA teams will factor in somewhat, but if teams are questionably excluded, it will be more a result of the committee not want over-representation from one conference. Which is udnerstandable. But last year, did anyone really think Oregon was better than Florida, LSU, Auburn and Alabama? Really?

[wvuauthor]

That is a problem in my eyes..Oregon had a better record, but they may have not been a better team...so how do you determine this??

[cjg11582]

There is always going to be a level of subjectivity, whether you are picking 8, 16 or 64 teams for a playoff field. They can take into not only number of losses but severity and discrepancy of losses. Most college football afficianados can look at two teams like LSU and Oregon, and discern that LSU was a superior team. However, they are going to avoid unbalanced conference representation so Oregon will get the bid anyways. It pretty much comes down to what the voters think is more important, conference or team fairness. Most likely they will choose the former, which I do not agree with, but in either case this system would be much more efficient than what we have now.

[wvuauthor]

I agree with what you are saying, there will be discrepancies regardless of what system is in place. I guess it comes down to finding the one that works the best...

[desertrat]

Strength of schedule is one of the toughest issues to determine in college football. Teams that choose to face Citadel, NE Louisiana, Ball State, and the like deserve to have those games count against them. Whether you like them or not, USC plays Notre Dame every year, and in recent years have gone east to play Virginia Tech and Auburn among their out of conference games. They also play Fresno State and BYU quite often, teams that have had solid programs over the years. As for conferences, the top 5 BCS conferences are pretty close in quality if you look at it closely. The Pac-10 has a bad rap back east but if you look at the NFL players coming out of there they rate with everyone else. (Remember the Pac-10 has only 10 teams, not 12 so look at average NFL players per team) We need to discourage teams (including my Cornhuskers) from playing weak non-conference games for profit and encourage them to play higher quality opponents if they want to collect that big BCS payout at the end of the year.

[cjg11582]

I don't even think the Pac-10 is as much of a problem as The Big-12. Who did Oklahoma play that was so stellar in 2003 and 2004 to warrant a controversial decision to get into the title game both years? Leaving USC snubbed in 2003 and Auburn and Utah snubbed in 2004. These are just examples of innate biases unjustly affecting BCS decisions.
And all the conferences are not that close. The SEC every year has five teams in the top fifteen. That should be taken into consideration when evaluating their non-conference schedules.

[wvuauthor]

This is my main point. If we are going to use a 12 game schedule, teams are going to have to schedule some lesser opponents. This is especially true when teams back out on a deal 8 months before the season starts. At this point the only option you have is to schedule a I AA team.

[desertrat]

Originally Posted by cjg11582

I don't even think the Pac-10 is as much of a problem as The Big-12. Who did Oklahoma play that was so stellar in 2003 and 2004 to warrant a controversial decision to get into the title game both years? Leaving USC snubbed in 2003 and Auburn and Utah snubbed in 2004. These are just examples of innate biases unjustly affecting BCS decisions.
And all the conferences are not that close. The SEC every year has five teams in the top fifteen. That should be taken into consideration when evaluating their non-conference schedules.

And just who do those SEC teams play out of conference to warrant their high rankings? LSU squeaked out a home win against Oregon State 2 years ago only because the Beavers kicker missed 3 extra points and a FG. ASU racked up more than 500 yards against LSU just last year before a 4th quarter collapse by their special teams led to a narrow escape. USC made the trip to Auburn in 2003 and shut them out in their stadium 23-0. Why are the SEC teams rated so high? In my opinion it is because the media has bought into and fed the hype. Georgia won the SEC title last year, and then lost to West Virginia playing in front of their home crowd in Atlanta. South Carolina had a good year out of the SEC last year, and then lost to Missouri in their bowl game. I believe Wisconsin also went down to Florida and beat Auburn in their bowl game last year. I am not sold on SEC superiority until I see them play out of conference and convince me they are so high and mighty.

[wvuauthor]

I am not sold on any of the teams in the SEC either. But at the same time they always have four solid teams every year.

The fact of the matter is that every team in the country plays some walk over games each season...

[cjg11582]

I like how you conveniently fail too mention all the success The SEC has seen the past few years, and considering two of your examples are actual SEC wins (Which consisted of LSU against a vastly underrated Pac-10 team in ASU, the first game after the hurricane, I might add) that should tell you something. I am not going to dispute Auburn losing to Wisconsin or Georgia losing to WVU were not surprising outcomes, but they still went 4-3 in bowl play despite the two upsets. I still contend both of the aforementioned losses were a result of Barry Alvarez retiring (inspiring a victory) and an overwhelming majority of Georgia players being unconcerned about some inconsequential bowl game with the champion of the abysmal Big East.
And if the media was buying into the hype of the SEC, then Auburn wouldn't have been snubbed from the Orange Bowl two years ago in favor of a clearly undeserving Oklahoma. That assertion is laughable.

[wvuauthor]

So you are trying to tell yourself that the only reason WVU beat Georgia is because the dawgs were taking the Mountaineers lightly?? That's a ridiculous statement, and one that I am sure the UGA coaching staff would have to take issue with.

I guess when Slaton was running by Blue the entire game it was because he did not want to catch him because the game was not that important to him...

WVU won because they were the better team, and better prepared; Regardless of Big East or SEC affiliation...