Originally Posted by
gravedigger
Bogey, I think Richard was making the point that it matters sometimes and other times doesn't. The egg bowl victory does matter more when the bowl opponent is pitt, or rice or wake forest. But at times when it's Michigan, or Oklahoma State in the cotton bowl, or Clemson in the Chick fil a, the bowl game is bigger.
I do agree we should not play the EASIEST non conference schedule we possibly can. I Also think we should not schedule an Oklahoma State, or Texas, or USC for a non con game because it's not necessary to play that level of competition on top of our conference.
There has to be a medium and if I'm stating this wrong, I apologize, but I think the non con opponents should be this mixture:
1 swac like team from in state
1 directional school from close by
1 Tulane type team that allows us to play home and home but fans don't mind traveling to
1 lower tier major conference school like wake forest, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Duke, Maryland KNOWING FULL WELL THEY COULD END UP BEING GOOD THAT YEAR.
The lower tier major conference school game should follow the swac like team early in the year. The Tulane type team should be homecoming or swap with the lower tier major conference school game. The directional school should be later in the year, say end of October, to break up the conference schedule or even early November.
The Bama game and OM game should be in November every year. Those are the games we need the most emotion in.
So my perfect schedule would be:
Jackson State
Tulane
Kentucky
LSU
Vandy
Arkansas
Texas A&M
Indiana (homecoming)
Auburn
South Alabama
Alabama
Ole Miss
My reason for not playing the EASIEST noncom schedule: Simply that I want to make the 4 team playoff in 2 situations. One if we win the SEC (automatic), and two if we somehow lose an sec game to someone and fail to make the championship game, but deserve to be in the final 4. THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN if we play the 4 easiest teams possible to schedule. We will leave the door open to be excluded even if the loss is to bama who wins the SEC. LSU wouldn't be eliminated. Auburn wouldn't be. A&M wouldn't be due to markets and national popularity. But MSU, OM and Arkansas would be.
I want the chance of that eliminated if the last criterion is the strength of the noncom schedule, which it will be due to TV pressure, in the coming years.
We can all scream truthfully to the high heavens about the SEC schedule being enough, and it is, as long as you run the table or win the conference. But we need to position ourselves to make the final four even if we dont.