Georgia's path to victory

Reader Jack Murak GETS IT in a post on our comments forum.

He echoes many of the structural elements of arguments I've made, and explains why Georgia will win (if it wins).

The argument---"Familiarity" matters.  Look at USC.  Pac-10 foes have consistently given them more trouble the last three years than big-name out of conference opponents have.  The Pac-10 is much more familiar with what USC does and can adjust accordingly.

Georgia will have an incredibly difficult time catching up to what Boise is doing on the field.  Its not that what Boise is doing is complicated, but that its unfamiliar and highly successful.  Boise is going to score a bunch of points this game, you can almost count on it.

Thing is, there are only a few factors in Georgia's favor: talent and homefield advantage.

As I said over and over again long ago on here, the talent gap between these teams will determine the outcome.  Georgia fans basically have to hope their team is so far out ahead of Boise that they can overcome Boise's impressive scheme to win this game.  Playing at home, with the fans and the weather will also be contributing factors.

That said, I still strongly believe Boise State wins this game (Jack says Georgia).  We already know WHY.

But if they don't, you'll also have known well ahead of time WHY.

At least some of us grasp the fundamental principles behind the arguments made, though, and aren't just spouting blather with little significance to the game. 

Resource CFB weekly schedule in progress

It's a bit tedous, and you can easily find links to websites with schedules (albeit fairly messy ones), but I'm trying to have a page just for the week's schedule of games on here.

At least for week one.  If it takes up too much time, then out the door it goes.

Here's the link (in progress)---This Week's Games

You can find it on the menu to your left.  The benefit here is that it's not as cluttered as the schedule you might find on ESPN.com or CollegeFootballNews.

So how does Katrina effect college football?

Stick with me as I continue to update this entry.

We already know Tulane shut down the school on Saturday. This story from ESPN.com says that LSU has also closed its Baton Rouge campus until at least Tuesday. Same thing for South Mississippi (do they mean Southern Miss?). LSU also has cancelled Monday's practice.

Earlier I created an image showing Katrina's expected path and D-1 programs near its path (thumbnail below, those little yellow dots)

Not much has changed since then, but it appears the storm could deliver a lot of storms, rain, flooding and tornados across much of the South. As such, Katrina could also affect not only the ten named schools, but also others in the region. We'll begin to document what happens with those programs as the storm moves away from the nation's southern shores and into land. The Weather Channel says tropical storm-like conditions are expected fairly far inland. I hunch this means places like Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and points nearby.

I anticipate the early-season schedule will become quite muddled as a handful of programs must either 1)relocate in order to practice for their opening week games or 2)ditch practice to attend to helping their cities and towns recover.

Here are the programs I highlighted in the map earlier, with their opening week games:

Saturday

• North Texas @ LSU 8 ET
• Louisiana-Lafayette @ Texas 7 ET
• Murray State @ Mississippi State 7 ET
• Cal Poly @ Troy 7 ET
• Middle Tennessee State @ Alabama 7 ET
• UAB @ Tennessee 1230 ET
• Georgia Tech @ Auburn 845 ET
  

Sunday

• Tulane @ Southern Miss 4 ET
  

Monday

• Mississippi @ Memphis 430 ET

SEC scheduling again

HeismanPundit, on top of things as always.

What was talked about all offseason HERE And HP is now in SI and other sources.  I apologize for not discussing more Ohio State, Tennessee, Georgia, etc. quasi-elite teams.  I mean it.

A pundit gets it!

Kudos to Sports Illustrated's John Walters---link

Contests between schools who do not compete in the same conference are known as "intersectional games," except in the Southeastern Conference, where they are known as "wins." See, SEC teams rarely schedule worthy non-conference foes and even less often do they leave home to play them. Les Miles isn't just an SEC coach; it's an SEC credo. This year the 12 SEC schools will play a total of six intersectional games on the road. They are:

Sept. 1: Vanderbilt at Wake Forest
Sept. 17: Mississippi State at Tulane
Sept. 17: Arkansas at Southern California
Sept. 17: Kentucky at Indiana
Nov. 5 : Tennessee at Notre Dame
Nov. 26 : Georgia at Georgia Tech (though this is actually an annual rivalry)

Kudos to the Hogs and Vols for risking their seasons with a tough road trip. Shame on Auburn, Florida and LSU for playing it safe. Memo to the SEC: This is why you can go undefeated and not play for the national title. We don't want to hear how the SEC is the toughest conference in the nation after it went 3-3 last bowl season.

Memo No. 2 to the SEC: There's this contraption, see. You put people in it and it magically transports them through space. No, not the General Lee. An airplane. Try it sometime.

Walters is the first writer to really step up to the plate on this one and not just timidly nudge the SEC teams. Sometimes bold words are needed, when simple and patient nudges go ignored.

Update on Thursday, July 28, 2005 at 11:21PM by CFR

Thanks go to Brian from MGoBlog for the following links, at Braves and Birds (a Georgia blogger)-

Unhappy link one

Unhappy link number two

B&B pulls up each conference's OOC games against top 30 preseason teams.  Decent rebuttal, but keep in mind some of these games the SEC makes don't have a home-and-home, it's a one-and-done (LSU/Oregon State last year) or we'll play two situation.  Additionally, most OOC games are scheduled three to eight years in advance, which is why we've seen so many summer announcements about games to be played in 2010, 2013, etc.  There's guesswork involved in that, and the SEC has been very shrewd in going about that.

We can extrapolate backwards and see that Kentucky taking on Louisville was a great idea at the time, as was LSU/ASU, Arkansas/USC (yes!).

As to the point about travel---it's important!  Brian from MGoBlog got grumpy about travel, but look at his team, each time it heads out West its been embarrassed, not just by USC in the Rose Bowl, but in Autzen, etc.  That's not to say the West is a difficult road test, only that going on the road against unfamiliar opponents and weather and stadiums tends to give a greater test to elite, contending teams than say, Auburn driving down the road to play Georgia Tech, in the same geographical area, same weather, little travel, familiar stadiums, etc.

Why the defensiveness over scheduling?  Scheduling is everything, it gives us a picture of just how good a team is against someone other than common opponents.  When a team or conference gerrymanders its OOC games its robbing the fan and the pundit and the voter of the ability to get a better picture of what that team's made of.  It becomes crucial when end-of-season polling happens and someone good gets left out of a certain bowl, or championship game.  The criticism of the SEC is more than warranted, in this context.

As to the point about why no criticism of the Big Twelve---we'll have some as the season goes along.  But keep in mind the Big Twelve doesn't have its butt kissed by the national media, and doesn't self-appoint as the best conference in all the land, no matter the year.  If a conference wants that mantle, why does it schedule so weakly?  What does it have to hide?  Why won't its fans accept legitimate criticism?  I hate cliches, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, and it applies here.

Think about it, in probably a decade-plus (or in Georgia's case, 40 plus years) of its scheduling scheme, very little mainstream commentary has focused on this aspect of the SEC's rise in public perception.  So yes, its seems tired here on our active blog comment sections, or on the various message boards, but in the real world of college football, its simply never been given much consideration.  And why would it, when boobs like Craig James and Pete Fiutak simply ignore some of the fundamental issues at work.

The Big Twelve will have its day to get criticized, although we may see some further erosion this season from within that renders making an example of its members less meaningful.  They're part of the problem, too (as is the ACC, as members of 12-team bifurcated conferences and the scheduling tricks that inherently come with such a setup).

One more from iBlogforCookies

This one hits at an important point---schedule tough games!  Particularly, road games.

We'll repost the entire entry here because it's brief enough to allow as much, and because we can't figure out how to link to the specific entry (try here, look for July 1, 2005, and scan for "On The Road Again")-

In the past 15 years, the following national champions have had no challenging non-conference road games:

In 2003, LSU had a non-conference road game @ (2-9) Arizona.
In 2002, OSU had no non-conference road games.
In 2000, Oklahoma had no non-conference road games.
In 1994, Nebraska had no non-conference road games.
In 1992, Alabama had a non-conference road game @ Tulane (why?)

The following national champs did have challenging non-conference neutral site or road games:

In 2004, USC had a neutral site game in Maryland against Va Tech.
In 2003, USC had a non-conference road game @ Auburn.
In 2001, Miami had non-conference road games @ Penn State and @ Florida State.
In 1999, Florida State had a non-coference road game @ Florida
In 1998, Tennessee had a non-conference road game @ Syracuse
In 1997, Nebraska had a non-conference road game @ Washington
In 1996, Florida had a non-conference road game @ FSU (they lost)
In 1995, Nebraska had a non-conference road game @ MSU
In 1993, Florida State had non-conference road games @ Notre Dame (they lost) and @ Florida.
In 1991, Washington had a non-conference road with @ Nebraska
In 1991, Miami had several non-conference road games, including @ Florida State
In 1990, Colorado had a neutral site non-conference game with Tennessee and non-conference road games with Illinois and Texas.

There is a point here.

It is "stop bitching that challenging September road games make winning the national title impossible." The top teams go on the road and win on the road and prove they are tough.

Right on.

How to schedule OOC games, 101

Check out this piece about Big Six member Utah's future OOC schedulemaking.

The Utes (Ute?  What's a Ute?~My Cousin Vinny) have added Big Six colleague member Louisville for two games in 2007 (road) and 2009 (home), and also Pac-10 contender Oregon for two in 2009 (road) and 2011 (home).

Imagine that, scheduling two BCS conference teams, one a top 10 squad and another a team that has been in the top 10 and won its conference within the last five seasons.  This really shouldn't be considered courageous, but compared to many college football teams and their pathetic scheduling gimmicks, this is something to behold.

Additionally, Utah is talking to Texas about a game down the road.

Sssssssssssmokin'

Check out Louisville's offensive output its last 6 and 9 games of last year-

• 44 points vs Boise State
• 55 points at Tulane
• 70 points vs Cincinnati
• 65 points at Houston
• 55 points vs TCU
• 56 points at Memphis

For the last 6 games, and the 3 previous before that ridiculous run are as follows:

• 41 points vs South Florida
• 41 points at Miami
• 59 points vs East Carolina

And, holding with our soon-to-arrive "Battleship" theory/analogy/concept...

Louisville's first three games were relatively low-scoring compared to their great run to finish the season:

• 28 points vs Kentucky
• 52 points at Army
• 34 points at North Carolina

For those keeping score at home, Louisville scored...

0-30 points: 1 time
30-40 points: 1 time
40-50 points: 3 times
50-60 points: 5 times
60-70 points: 2 times (high: 70)

Season scoring average: 50.0 PPG

Those final six games were truly remarkable, at 57.5 PPG.

Argue what you want about their level of competition, but even the most high-octane teams don't put together that kind of scoring offense, no matter who the combination of opponent.

This year Louisville's schedule takes a step up, and their scoring in theory should go down, especially with a gifted but first-time starting quarterback in Brian Brohm.  That said, they should once again be amongst the NCAA's best offenses this year and are just plain fun to watch.

Too bad Auburn never let Bobby Petrino have more fun... they might have actually retained him as OC for another season, bypassing that embarrassing home opening shutout against USC and very likely facing the Trojans in last year's Orange Bowl for what would have been a much more interesting championship.

Synergy

As discussed by HeismanPundit yesterday, conventional wisdom often is miscast as true wisdom in college football.  His call for independent thought/knowledge was responded to on here, and judging by the comments and reaction to our thoughts on the Boise State/Georgia matchup, such is the case again.

This time, it's the fans who do their best to shout down any defiance of that conventional wisdom, using name-calling and mockery instead of simple arguments and the good ol' back-and-forth exchange of sensible people.  Gosh this reminds us of the Senate lately.  But we digress.

Anyway, fear not those of you out there who believe in something that goes against that which is nearly codified in college football, or life.  We're taking a beating today, but we stand behind the comments.  We did more than a little elaboration, and gave support for what we've said.  It's up to others to either agree or disagree, but either way the smart ones know to have sensible and reasoned reactions to match the views espoused on here.

We appreciate and invite any sensible scrutiny of Georgia fans, they're passionate as they come and love their team.

Freeze-Frame: Ticket Prices (Clemson)

Random, but interesting-link

There's a really cool comparison chart within the link.  Clemson's athletic department did their homework (with the help of IMG Marketing) and feel they're very competitive relative to regional schools.

The season-ticket cost is $225.00

Single-game ticket prices (opponent):

• Texas A&M, Florida State, Miami-$48
• Boston College-$40
• Duke, Temple-$35

Clemson's Memorial Stadium holds approximately 81,000 seats, and 52,317 season tickets were sold in 2004.  The school also allocated approximately 12,000 seats for students, and 7,000 seats for visiting team fans.

As an aside, that's a fairly interesting home slate for the Clemson fans, 3 national programs, another decent OOC opponent, and two cupcakes.

2005 Spring Practice Dates

I finally found a link with 2005 spring practice dates.  Yes, spring practice is well underway for many teams, but several out there haven't started.

• Spring Practice Dates

Be sure and take a look and find out when your favorite team is hitting the field, if it hasn't already.

This Scheduling Thing Just Won't Go Away

Nor should it.  It looks like some folks are starting to catch on...

First, from the sometimes up, often down Pete Fiutak, on CFN's "Ask CFN" (March 4, 2005 entry)-

Is it just me or has the Pac 10 gone weak-kneed in the scheduling department this year? I have always been a fan of the league because, while other conferences were beating up on the small fry and talking about how great they were, Pac-10 teams were hitting the road and playing games worth watching. The Southern California and Arizona schools are keeping up their end but the northern schools are wimping out big time. Is it just a 1-year fluke, are the schedules tougher than they appear, or are Pac-10 schools trending towards softer schedules? – JAH

A: Absolutely, dead wrong. The Pac 10 did a great job scheduling real non-conference games and has even better ones on tap for 2006. You’re right; USC didn’t have to schedule a landmine like Fresno State. Arizona State is going to LSU and Arizona is going to Utah and hosting Purdue. There are some great other non-conference matchups too. UCLA plays Oklahoma, Oregon State is playing Boise State and at Louisville. Stanford is playing at Navy and Notre Dame, and Washington also plays the Irish. As far as the future, none of the other BCS leagues come close to having as good a non-conference slate in 2006: Arizona at LSU, Arizona State at Colorado, California at Tennessee and against Minnesota, Oregon at Fresno State, Oregon State at Boise State, Stanford at Notre Dame, USC at Arkansas and against Nebraska and Notre Dame, UCLA against Utah and at Notre Dame, and Washington at Oklahoma and against Fresno State. Only Washington State is taking it easy.

Nice work, Pete.  This underlines another point I've danced around, but knew someone out there would run with it---the Pac-10 is consistently the best scheduling conference in college football.

Also, addressing another issue I raised in an earlier essay and rant (and more), Fiutak has an interesting idea about early-season games:

The NCAA (or the infamous BCS group) should enact a policy whereby wins against non-IA opponents to not count toward a team's record, but a loss would. Therefore, there's no reward for scheduling such cupcakes - only risk. It won't stop the bullies from scheduling "tune up scrimmage games" like this, but it might take away some of the motivation to do so. – Doug
A: For everyone’s sake and for the betterment of the game, I have a different solution. Every D-I team should get one home game that doesn't count against a D-IAA team on the last weekend in August. This does two things: 1) it gives every team a tune up game. Without the preseason like the NFL has, college football teams have to rock from the opening kickoff. The result is sloppy play and uneven teams that aren’t nearly as good as the are a few weeks later. Wouldn’t you rather see Miami play Florida State in the middle of October than on opening day? If teams don’t want to risk injury, they can play their backups and develop some depth. 2) It’s an easy payday for the schools making the athletic directors happy. After that one home game, there are no more D-IAA games on the schedule.

This isn't a bad suggestion, at first glance.  I still don't understand the need to grab teams from another entire division, but I agree with Fiutak that teams would be best served with some kind of warmup game that didn't count for anything instead of early-season losses when strong and weak teams are on more equal footing costing a great team more than they should when the polls come out.

Our next item on the scheduling list, keeping with the Pac-10 theme:

I found this amazing write-up on one of our blogs in the links section, comparing the SEC and Pac-10 out-of-conference schedules, head-to-head matchups, and several other scheduling factors.  It's pretty damning against the SEC if you ask me.  A lot of it is in graphical form and hard to copy on here, so just stop by the link and take a look.

For a conference whose supporters and many from within claiming outright "superiority" over other teams and conferences, they look average if not worse against what is often considered the weakest or next-weakest BCS conference, the Pac-10.  Kudos to the author, who for the most part uses data in a fair way to absolutely crush a lot of pre-existing media and fan bias towards the SEC, and in a similar vein if the post had gone a little farther, the Big 12.

Year-to-year, these conferences aren't static in relative strength.  Nobody is really superior, when using smart analysis, but some years one conference is really strong, and another year it's weak.  That's college football.  Some years the SEC is looking great, some years it's the Pac-10 or the ACC.

We Praise, We Scold

We try to be fair here at Resource, and have a consistent message about the issues that are important to the game.  As you well know we've been on a scheduling tangent of late.

While continuing to play catchup with the week's news, this silly AP release came to our attention.  Much like LSU's scheduling puff-piece, ESPN picked up this homage to Arkansas States' OOC schedule.  The difference?  Tiny little Arkansas State's OOC schedule had some meat to it!

Arkansas State is set to play Missouri and Oklahoma State, two midlevel programs in BCS conferences, as well as a softer matchup against Tennessee-Martin.

Why is it that the schools that have little to gain other than compensation are willing to take on the big boys, yet the big boys can't play in the sand box together?

Fear.

I wish a few more established programs would end the shenanigans and find the courage and commitment to the game to make a run at each other.

Scheduling, Condensed

As we noted below, we have uploaded a document/essay explaining some of our thoughts on the scheduling practices within college football.

After sending the document to an associate for review, he said it was too long.  That may very well be the case, and in order to make things a little less burdensome for those who may not enjoy taking on 3,000 words focused so narrowly on scheduling, we offer the following as a condensed version of some of the arguments.  Take this as a teaser, if you will, as we hope you will find the time to download, read, analyze and consider the arguments posed within the essay.

• Scheduling is a two-part system: conference games and out-of-conference (OOC) games.  The conference slate is usually rigid and decided well in advance.  It is beneficial and necessary.  The OOC slate is more arbitrary, and more likely to be exploited.
  
• It is to the game's benefit, especially in regards to understanding the relative strengths of teams within a given season, to foster an environment of equitable scheduling.  There are several impediments to that vision.
• First, not all conferences are the same size.  The 10-team conferences are easier to judge and analyze, while the larger 12-team conferences are split into divisions and have various means to gerrymander their schedules in ways favorable to the more elite teams.
• Also, OOC scheduling is unregulated.  For every USC taking on Virginia Tech on the road, Notre Dame annually and elite teams within small conferences, there are several Auburns and Kansas States, taking on 1-AA opponents at home, and avoiding if at all possible BCS conference teams, let alone elite smaller division schools.  We support the open scheduling rules, but are intolerant of the various elusive and exploitative ways many established programs go about making their OOC slate.  It hurts the game, artificially boosting their records and rankings at the expense of good teams who were willing to test themselves against more legitemate opponents.
• We set aside some guidelines, perhaps rules, to schedule opponents.  Nobody from outside D-I should be tolerated.  Contending teams on BCS conference teams that take on weak teams from the smaller, non-BCS conferences should be frowned upon and their credibility (when it comes to rankings) held up to very strict scrutiny.
• One last point we more or less forgot to mention in the essay-loading up a schedule with home games is unacceptable.  No elite BCS conference team that regularly contends (Ohio State, USC, Georgia, etc.) should have an 8-game home schedule, or in an 11-game slate, have 7 home games and just 4 road games.  Home field advantage is very pronounced in college football, and such maneuvering usually goes unnoticed and uncriticized.  The buck stops here.  There is nothing wrong with 6 home games and 5 road games, or 6 home and 6 road, but there is simply no justification for 7/4 or 8/4, 8/5 imbalances.

There is a lot more to the scheduling process that we haven't yet discussed, and will when those aspects come to our attention.  Hopefully this primer has opened your eyes if you had not noticed these things before, or seen them in this kind of light.  There are various valid counter-arguments most programs can offer to our challenges, but nevertheless a lot of exploitation goes on (even unabashed exploitation, by Kansas State, for example), at the fans' and media's expense in determining who is best, and also at the expense of good teams that follow the rules and are better than teams that don't yet get ranked far lower.  That has to come to an end, it's simply unfair, and not a built in unfairness, but one created through dishonesty and manipulation.

The Scheduling Game

As promised, I have uploaded a document explaining some of our thoughts about the shady scheduling practices inside of college football.  It is a very controversial, but instructive and informative read about some less-discussed aspects of the game.

Please be sure and download it and read it for yourself soon.

You can find it by going to Files at left, and clicking on Intelligence, it is called "scheduling".  It is in microsoft word format.

We'll post a more brief explanation of the essay's main points soon on the blog.

We here at CollegeFootballResource.com have a mission to be an educational resource about the game, not just a link resource and central hub for your college football needs.  Please take advantage of what we have to offer, because we're doing something different here.

Update on Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 09:43PM by CFR

This feature is no longer available

Scheduling Rant

Last week I threw a fit over an LSU press release that got picked up by ESPN.com, related to LSU's 2005 home schedule.  Subsequently, I promised one or two more posts about scheduling, that have yet to be delivered.

Expect one post and a lot more tomorrow.  Be prepared to download a Microsoft Word document, because we're at a word count of over 2,500 and that's really not a good fit for the tight format of the blog.

Fell For It... Sigh

Ahhhh the college football media.  You gotta love them.  Mostly, I admire their laziness and otherwise ability to be manipulated.

Here's an AP story picked up by ESPN.com about LSU's 2005 home schedule.  It's basically an LSU puff piece arguing that it's schedule is beefed up.

Now, why would this piece ever appear on a major college football media website?  College football in general has the most rabid, knowledgeable (about their teams at least) fans.  They know the schedule, they've planned their tailgates and road trips well in advance.  That's why college football schedules are posted years in advance.

To answer my question, the article is up there because it is a defensive salvo from the SEC camp.  You see, SEC teams have taken a beating in recent years about their various scheduling practices.   Auburn was universally mocked last year for playing weak sister The Citadel, among other cupcakes.  The schedule cost them a shot at the Orange Bowl.

To their credit, nobody circles the wagons like the institutions in the SEC.  So there's no doubt we'll see more articles like this and some spin from the conference's defenders (ahem, Tim Brando) once the season starts about revamped scheduling practices.

For years college football fans have been told the SEC is the best conference, bar none.  Not just in any given year, but every year.  And the college football media buys it.  Is it the best conference some years?  Arguably.  It's mostly a weak argument at that, but one that can be made.  Unfortunately for the conference, one of its greatest strength is also its greatest weaknesses.

Scheduling.

We will go into much further detail at a later time on here, but there is a fancy SEC scheduling myth that few people really understand, and fewer take the time to criticize.

Some of the criticisms include the following:

• Weak out-of-conference (OOC) schedules
• OOC slate never leaving the geographical south
• Bifurcated conference setup that allows for few matchups of the conference's top teams

There are many more.

The issue at large is scheduling practices, something that's finally starting to catch up with the SEC as fans like myself call them on their shenanigans.  And this article is one way the SEC tries to control the public debate on the issue.  It's one-sided, and aims at spinning away a weakness.  This isn't to say the SEC is the only conference guilty of scheduling shenanigans.  Only that they are the masters and aren't taken to task about it.  It benefits them at the expense of other conferences, which is the part that bothers me.

College football doesn't have a regulated schedule the way other major sports do.  So its up to the member institutions, voluntarily, to create competitive schedules.  Many teams avoid that task, and in the case of the SEC, an entire conference has undertaken a deceptive scheme to prop up 3-4 of its "best" teams in any given year, giving them inflated records.

As said before, we'll detail this in much greater detail down the road, so our apologies for any confusion.  But for tonight we'll glance once more at the aforementioned schedule, LSU's 2005 home slate.

North Texas (9/3)
Arizona State (9/10)
Tennessee (9/24)
Florida (10/15)
Auburn (10/22)
Appalachian State (11/5)
Arkansas (11/26)

Funny, but in the gushing praise for the schedule in that article, nowhere was North Texas mentioned, or Appalachian State.

That's TWO cupcakes on a single schedule.  Worse, they're home games.  Worse, they're out-of-conference.  If you hadn't taken the time to find LSU's full schedule, you very likely would have fallen for the wool-over-eyes spin coming from Baton Rouge.

Yes, four teams were in the AP top 25 last year.  But a lot of that has to do, again, with the SEC scheduling myth we'll detail down the road.  The lone exception is Arizona State.

To bring up one more criticism, the only major name out-of-conference teams playing the SEC with any consistency lately is the Pac-10 slate.  LSU hosted Oregon State last year.  This year it's Arizona State.  Alabama hosted UCLA a few years ago.  Auburn hosted USC in 2003.

I have a strong hunch this is because the SEC has long perceived the Pac-10 as the weakest big-name conference, and given the Pac-10's willingness to not only play difficult OOC slates, but make road games out of those slates, this was an easy grab for SEC teams.

To the SEC's credit most of these games against the Pac-10 have been season openers or very early games, when teams are at their most vulnerable (especially upper-level teams).  But they also are usually home games, a huge advantage in college football.

Reading the AP release, I had the sense that LSU should be given credit for its home schedule, but it is in fact is only responsible for its out-of-conference opponents, as an SEC team's conference slate is decided by the conference.  So although Auburn looks like a hell of a test, LSU plays Auburn most years anyway.  That's like Oklahoma talking up its game with Texas.  They are conference foes, that game happens every year.  LSU also gets to play SEC cellar-dwellars Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Ole Miss in 2005.  That's what happens when you are a member of a conference.

LSU fans should be excited to have some fun home games, but this schedule is nothing out of the ordinary.  Unless it's the SEC and anytime a Pac-10 team that's on your OOC slate suddenly makes the top 25 the year before.  Then you send out a press release for the AP and ESPN.com to pick up.