Is The SEC Being Singled Out Unfairly For Its Out of Conference Schedule

With all the sucess of the SEC it's to be expected that the league will have a target on its backs.

One of the most common beefs about the SEC is the schedule of some of its teams. Or at least the out of conferene part of it. Now the people who are blind to truth completely disregard the meat of these SEC teams' schedule and just focus on who we play outside of the SEC. On any given year just nto mention a couple top ten match ups.

Right now there are five SEC teams in the top 13. Four of those teams are in the top 10. Thats 40 percent of the country's top 10 teams hailing from the SEC. So to the SEC fan its very logical to say why should we? Is it not?

Lets not forget with our present BCS system, strength of schedule is very important. If you are from a conference that plays not many teams of quality you might have to go looking for some quality match ups.

Anyways back to the subject at hand. People bash UF for playing the Citidel, and Western Kentucky. It's often said "Why is UF playing teams like western Kentucky"? I also hear people say UF should follow USCs approach. Anybody anywhere. Well again I say that sounds great. But I'm not sure USC would be playing Ohio State if the PAC10 was stronger. And by the way I'll be the first to say the Pac 10 has improved as they now have more than just USC ranked. 

Also I know that schedules are made years in advance so some people will argue that the whole point of this article is incorrect. To that I say that schedules can be changed as close as a year before a game gets scheduled. These changes happen all the time in college football.

This all got me thinking. Does the SEC dodge big-named teams? Unfortunately I must say some do and some don't. And I'll be the first to say my Gators fall into the category of teams that don't. Bama, Georgia, and Tennessee get props for playing in the same conference as UF but abandoning the whole "We got it tough enough attitude" That, the Gators have taken.

Again I'm not saying UF is wrong. I believe UF has a leg to stand on with its stance. I mean not many other teams play as many top  25 ranked teams as we do. So I don't feel UF has no moral obligation to play harder teams. I do feel we have the right to take it easy since we got it so hard. But I do respect Bama for scheduling Virginia Tech and Georgia scheduling ASU and Tennessee scheduling UCLA.

As I did a little bit of digging I found out very quickly that most teams schedule cup cakes on there schedule. Here are some examples of Big named teams from conference by conference.

BIG 10                                                                                                    

Penn State plays Akron, Temple, Eastern Illinois,                                                 Ohio State plays Navy, and New Mexico State.

ACC                                                                                                                  FSU plays Jacksonville State                                                                        Boston College plays North eastern and Kent State

PAC10                                                                                                        USC plays San Jose State                                                                                Cal plays Eastern Washington.                                                                         And lets not forget people that the PAC10 has 5 teams that had losing seasons last year. Washington and WSU won a combined total of 2 games.

Big 12                                                                                                        Texas plays Louisiana Monroe                                                                               Oklahoma plays UTEP and Idaho state                                                                Texas Tech plays North Dakota, Rice, and Houston

Big Easy/east                                                                                                 Cincinnati Bearcats play South East Missouri State and Miami of Ohio                    Connecticut plays Rhode island and Ohio.

Mountain West                                                                                               Utah plays San Jose State and Wyoming                                                          BYU  plays Utah State.

Now to me these are all better teams of therir confereces and they are all play lack luster competition. So why is it any different? The only differece this ole southern boy sees is those other teams aren't playing nearly as many ranked teams as the SEC teams play. But that's just biased me.