Don't jump on the national championship bandwagon just yet. We have Appalachian St and Middle Tennessee St not to mention Tulane on the OC schedule next season. Could hurt us unless we can go undefeated. If everything goes the way they usually do then Virginia Tech lays an egg next season and we are left with our conference wins to carry us.
Middle Tennessee State is at least a decent team from the Sun Belt and will win their conference this year. Hopefully they can follow that up with similiar results next year. The Tulane thing is understandable. That Appalachian State game is inexcusable. I assume this is another one of those deals where someone backed out at the last second? We can get good teams from the non BCS conferences to come down here ---- MAC (Ohio, C. Michigan, W. Michigan), Conference USA (Houston, So. Miss), WAC (Hawaii, Nevada), or Mountain West (BYU, TCU) or maybe an independent like Navy (8-3 this season). When it all comes down to it, I guess scheduling conflicts, opponent's reluctance to play only away (vs home and away series), etc just make it too difficult to avoid such poor scheduling results. Appalachian State is a Div II (can't find them in any Div I conference). There is no positive at all to schedule this kind of team. Scheduling ULL would actually be better for our SOS, believe it or not. Computer polls don't take too kindly to Div II scheduling.
I was looking at next year's schedule yesterday. We should have a very good chance to go all the way. If JR returns (which I don't expect) we would likely start the season in the top 5. If he does not we should still be in the pre-season top 10. We should definately be the odds-on-favorite to take the SEC.
Appy St. is in the Southern Conference in Div I-AA, one of the best conferences in that division. Last year they won the Div I-AA national championship. I'd assume that they would have a higher ranking than several I-A teams if they're as good as they usually are.
It won't matter. If it comes down to the wire, like this year, they will make an issue out of playing a 1-AA team. Just like they did with Florida playing Western Carolina and Auburn playing The Citadel in '04. The SEC has to stop scheduling 1-AA teams and play better OOC teams. The argument that the SEC schedule is tough enough doesn't hold water outside the SEC.
Unfortunately money and population seem to be more important that anything else. The criteria seems to change as frequently as Oregon changes uniforms. We could play ND, USC, Ohio State, and Michigan (and win them all) and some pollster would still try to say that the PAC-10 or BIG-10 is better. I would like to play tougher OOC teams but after playing four Top-10 teams on the road and also playing bowl eligible Arizona, Alabama, and Kentucky, you would think people would realize how tough our schedule already is. It's just another excuse to help the media darlings get to the BCS. Maybe we should occasionally have a year where we only play six conference games so the SEC can go kick some ass around the country. We'd probably put 10 teams in bowl games and the SEC Championship could be for the BCS title. :yelwink2:
I think it may be tough to go the whole way. I am just thinking about Arkansas with Felix Jones and MacFadden coming back, and with out departing seniors & draft picks on both offense and defense.
