He has some decent points, but they get lost in his condescending rant. 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 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/john_walters/07/27/intersectional.games/index.html His final stab: September 10: Arizona State at LSU. A pair of 9-3 squads from a year ago meet in Death Valley. The Tigers learned their lesson about Pac-10 schools last season, when Oregon State came a callin'. Ouch. Funny, doesn't FL/FLST work out to an away game every other year? He may very well have a point, but he doesn't back it up at all. He should have presented an analysis of number of OOC games versus top 25 teams for each conference over the last five years, normalized per team in the conference (since all don't have 12). COuld do it for away games as well. Obviously the shiitty conferences would look great. I'm just interested in the BCS conferences. . . While our rescheduling of Tulane every year hardly satisfies my personal desire for quality OOC opponents, I do hope the "special deal" will allow us to use the 12th game to do so.
There is validity to some of it. I've been saying that the SEC plays very weak Non-Conference Schedules. I think he's a little harsh on the SEC as a conference though. I believe it is top 3 no doubt. It's hard to say what the toughest conference truly is b/c it changes every year. He makes good points about Tenn and Ark playing some tough road games. I wish the SEC teams would play some on the road. Last time LSU played a big time road game was VaTech. Of course we know VaTech screwed LSU though. I really wish they'd fix this stuff so that all BCS teams played other BCS teams in non conference games. I really believe you'd be able to tell who youre really good teams are if you did it like that. But, that is a fantasy world.
Do these guys completely forget that teams generally schedule home and homes with these teams? We are going to Tempe in 2008... We are getting ridiculed because we didn't schedule the away this year, but we'd just get slammed in '08 when we would've played ASU at home... We are gonna hear the same **** next year with Arizona coming to Baton Rouge... Who cares if we went there in '03..... Shame on us for scheduling our half of the home and home... Funny how he bashes our OOC games, then in his Top 10 OOC games, 4 of them are SEC teams...
why doesnt this idiot write about the real reason sec teams dont schedule non conf road games---$$$. from this article most readers will infer that sec teams are pu$$ie$. its like this only because we pack our stadiums, so road games lose us big money. we figure that our schedule is so tough that we can handle non conf gimmes.
Nobody has mentioned the fact that most major schools don't want to schedule us. Fear of getting their season ruined by a non-conference foe. How many invitations have we sent out and received a "thanks, but, no thanks" in return?
I agree with salty, it's a two-way street. This tool, er rather, "sack twiddler", wants it both ways. He fails to mention the SEC is the toughest conference and therefore you may not want to schedule a bit-timer OOC especially if your team has injuries, etc.. The SEC is tough enough but we don't shy away from teams. Look at the year before last when we won a ton of bowls games.
What lesson did we learn from the Oregon State game? That LSU was able to find a way to win. That's what we learned.
