Another angle on this issue. Of course it comes from the Wazoo Fan Board - a school your AD calls when looking for a respectable cupcake to put on your schedule -- but I think it's interesting to see someone else looking at the SEC -- and quietly ignoring the Pac 10's Rose Bowl Advantage:
Speaking of 2010 schedules, look at Florida's
by spencer peaty on Jan 5, 2010 8:57 PM PST 5 comments
This is from benzduck at Addicted to Quack, I just wanted to pass this along as more evidence that Pac-10 teams have to do way more in the way of playing good teams and traveling across the country, only to get no credit for it. As Nuss says, all that matters is they are in the EEESSSSSSS SEEEEEE SEEEEEEE.
9/4 Miami (Ohio, not Florida)
9/11 South Florida (Grothe and Selvie are gone)
9/18 @ Tennessee (possible trap, but Kiffin has zilch returning)
9/25 Kentucky
10/2 @ Alabama
10/9 LSU
10/16 MissSt
10/23 bye
10/30 Georgia
11/6 @ Vanderbilt
11/13 South Carolina
11/20 Appalachian St
11/27 @ Florida St
8 home games, and they only leave the state of Florida 3 times.. twice to the state of Tennessee, which will as usual be stacked with two world-class college football powerhouses in UT and Vandy. </sarcasm>
I suppose the Gators should get credit for scheduling ONE decent OOC away game (although I doubt they had a choice considering it's FSU who they play every year), but if they don't go 10-2 (at worst) with that schedule, someone's head will roll.
This may be an upgrade in comparison to previous schedules, but it's still pretty advantageous no matter how you look at it.
Given the Pac10's insistence on playing a round-robin schedule, and the resulting necessity for half the teams to play 5 road games every year right out of the box, why do Pac-10 teams even bother scheduling OOC road games? Oh yeah, we have standards. Never mind.
*One more note, the last non-conference game Florida played outside of their own state was in 1991.
