Delving Into The SEC Schedule Numbers (So Easy a Caveman Can Do It)

Recently, Franklin Crittenden wrote an article claiming that the SEC schedule makers were screwing Alabama by allowing more teams the opportunity to schedule a BYE week prior to their game against the Tide. He posted some pretty telling numbers to help make his case. Well, I'm here to correct that little assertion.

First off, the ground rules. An open week is defined as any week that the SEC did not schedule an SEC opponent for that week's game. A bye week is any week in which a team did not play prior to their game the following week. So, when looking for these numbers, I had to search the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia and ESPN.com's schedules to find not only weeks when the team's opponent did not play during the season, but also weeks when the team's opponent played a non-conference opponent in the week prior. For the purposes of this article, I did not include games that occurred in the first week of the season.

I used data from 1992, when the SEC divided into two divisions, until 2009.

Here's the chart (team, number of opponents' open weeks, number of opponents' bye weeks):

Alabama - 67 - 34

Arkansas - 64 - 26

Auburn - 72 - 33

Florida - 73 - 32

Georgia - 79 - 28

Kentucky - 43 - 19

LSU - 63 - 28

Miss. St. - 55 - 17

Ole Miss - 50 - 17

S. Carolina - 69 - 17

Tennessee - 57 - 26 

Vanderbilt - 49 - 12

Interesting numbers here because the range is 30 (79-49). The mean is 61.75, which I'll round up to 62 games. 7 of the 12 teams are above that average, and 5 are below it. Breaking it down by division, the West teams had 371 such opponents and the East had 370. The games were a little bit more evenly spread in the West, as the East had the top two AND the bottom two.

Franklin has a little bit of a point when you look at just the recent schedules, but when you look at the whole picture, Alabama ranks 5th in the SEC in total opponents' open weeks. They are, however, 1st in the SEC in opponents' bye weeks, but Auburn and Florida are both within 2 games of that total of 34.

While it would seem like having a bye week or a tune-up game would be beneficial to your opponent, 4 of the top 5 teams have winning records these games. Florida (2nd) and Auburn (3rd) have 58-10-0 and 45-19-2 records in those games (through 2008), respectively. The SEC is a collective 357-333-6 in those games, meaning that having a non-conference game or a week off prior to playing a fellow SEC team doesn't really give you much of an edge. In fact, you'll win less than 50% of the time.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that these numbers are brought down by teams such as Vandy (11-36-0), South Carolina (22-43-1), Mississippi State (19-32-0), Ole Miss (16-30-0) and Kentucky (13-28-0).

So, basically, what I've come to realize through all of this research and analysis in the last week, is that having a tune-up game or a bye week does not help much when you are playing one of the top-tier teams in the SEC.