College Football 2011: 7 Teams That Do Play a Preseason Schedule

If you include college football as the fifth major sport in America, it is the only one that has no preseason.  Additionally, most NCAA basketball programs start their season with a few exhibition games these days.

But in college football, there are no exhibitions, no warm-up games, no games of little consequence.

Or are there?

Over the past decade, many teams have taken to scheduling opponents so embarrassingly below their own talent level, it's as if the New England Patriots had New Bedford High School on their schedule.

So, while the games still technically count in the season's final standings, the games are, in effect, preseason games.

Here is a list of schools who truly do play a preseason schedule, even if they don't call it as such.

Stanford Cardinal

Stanford had one of the better years in the program's history in 2010, finishing 12-1 and winning the Orange Bowl.

What better way to follow up that success with the scheduling of some horribly weak opponents to open the following season?

The Cardinal do precisely that with games against two programs who have a combined 2010 win total equal to one-third that of Stanford's.

First up are the Spartans of San Jose State. SJSU finished 2010 1-12, with their only win coming against FCS Southern Utah—a game the Spartans won by five points. Following that game that's sure to be over by the end of the first quarter, the Cardinal travel to 3-9 Duke, who eked out wins last season against Navy and Virginia. Their only convincing win last year was against FCS Elon.

If you're the type of person who likes to make wagers on sure things, you can bet the bank that Stanford will start 2011 2-0. It's as sure as the the sun rising in the east tomorrow morning.

Michigan State Spartans

After finishing 2010 with an impressive 11-2 record and a share of the Big Ten title, Michigan State is working very hard to announce its presence on the national scene in the football world.

What better way than to emulate some of the best teams in the nation over the past decade and schedule some of the easiest games possible in weeks one and two?

Sparty will begin 2011 with a visit from FCS Youngstown State.

The Penguins made a name for themselves a little over a decade ago when their head coach—Jim Tressel—led them to four FCS national championships during his tenure from 1986 to 2000. But since Tressel left for Ohio State, YSU hasn't enjoyed the same success. Last season, the Penguins posted a record of just 3-8.

Scheduling an FCS team is bad enough, but a 3-8 FCS team? Sure, the game was actually scheduled after the 2008 season... but YSU was 4-8 in 2008, so MSU doesn't have any excuses.

Michigan State's second opponent of the year is Florida Atlantic. This is the second year MSU will play FAU early in the season, and it was originally schedules as a home-and-home series. But, for financial reasons, FAU decided not to host the Spartans at their home field, but rather at an NFL stadium. Which stadium did FAU choose? Ford Field. In Detroit. Just 75 miles from East Lansing, and 1,100 miles from Boca Raton. So much for a home-and-home series.

While we won't fault MSU for FAU's (admittedly genius) scheme to sell as many tickets as possible to their “home” game against Michigan State, the fact remains that FAU was just 4-8 last season as a Sun Belt team. The Sun Belt is frequently in a heated battle with the MAC as the worst conference in the FBS, and FAU couldn't even manage five wins last year.

Michigan State could win this game by several touchdowns without a single starter stepping on the field.

Michigan State is guaranteed to start 2011 2-0 with these two amazingly weak teams at the front of their schedule. Were it not for Notre Dame and Central Michigan (who upended MSU on the last time the Chippewas traveled to Spartan Stadium) on the schedule, Michigan State would be ripe for nationwide ridicule regarding their ridiculously weak non-conference schedule.

Alabama Crimson Tide

It's probably no surprise that an SEC (or two or three) would show up on a list such as this. After all, if there's one conference that has perfected the art of scheduling guaranteed wins, it's the Southeastern Conference.

SEC fans will surely fall back on the tired argument that seems to be the crux to every argument made in favor of the SEC: The SEC conference schedule is so tough that SEC teams deserve weak non-conference opponents.

Hogwash.

If the SEC were truly that great, they'd prove it by scheduling the best non SEC teams from around the country and beating them every year.

Now, to some SEC teams' credit, that is starting to happen. LSU is beginning the 2011 season against Oregon. Georgia starts off against Boise State.

But the SEC as a whole basically invented the idea of padding the win column with powder puff non-conference games.

Alabama is no different, and their 2011 non-con schedule lives up to the shamefully low bar the SEC has placed for itself when it comes to scheduling.

The Crimson Tide are expected to be one of the best teams in the nation in 2011. All things being equal, their week one game should do nothing but prove that fact. But things aren't equal, because Alabama is playing Kent State in week one. Kent State is a MAC program that hasn't had a winning season since 2001 (6-5) and hasn't been to a bowl game since a loss in the 1973 Tangerine Bowl to Tampa.

Alabama does get credit for the fact that Penn State is on their schedule this season, finishing a home-and-home contract with the Nittany Lions.

But week three, the Tide are back to the scrimmages, this time against North Texas. Not only are the Eagles a Sun Belt team, they're a bad Sun Belt team.

You have to combine all of North Texas's wins since near the beginning of the 2006 season before you equal Alabama's total wins from last year alone.

At least Alabama waited until late in the season (per their typical m.o.) to schedule their annual mind-numbingly boring game against an FCS opponent.

If you're one of the top teams in the nation, year in and year out, do you really need to keep scheduling FCS opponents? (That goes for everybody, not just Alabama).

Florida Gators

The Florida Gators show up on this list for their first two games of the 2011 season.

While it's understandable that Florida adds in an in-state opponent, it's hard to find an FBS school from Florida worse than FAU. The Owls were already discussed in our Michigan State slide, but suffice it to say that FAU was 4-8 last season, playing in the just plain awful Sun Belt Conference.

Florida's week two opponent isn't much better. Alabama-Birmingham was also 4-8 last season in Conference USA, and the Blazers are without a winning season since 2004.

Not only did Florida schedule two pretty bad teams in FAU and UAB, but Florida also shied away from scheduling a single team (including the FCS Furman Paladins on Nov. 19) from any part of the country other than the Southeast.

Nebraska Cornhuskers

Lest anyone think Michigan State is the worst offender in weak non-conference scheduling in the Big Ten, enter Nebraska.

Without ever having played a game in the Big Ten, Nebraska is already causing eyes to pop with their shockingly weak non-conference schedule in 2011.

The Cornhuskers get underway with a visit from FCS Chattanooga. At least the Mocs had a winning record last season, going 6-5 in the difficult Southern Conference. And their losses included Auburn, Appalachian State and Jacksonville State last season.

Still, an FCS program is an FCS program, and when you're an FBS team ranked in the Top 25, there's truly little excuse.

Week two has fans in Lincoln welcoming the Bulldogs from Fresno State.

While the entire Cal State system has many great athletic programs, football isn't among their great strengths, and Cal State-Fresno hasn't exactly been the most impressive team from the west.

Sure, Fresno State was a bowl team last season, but they lost to Northern Illinois. And the year before that, they lost to Wyoming. And before that, it was Colorado State. Not exactly the kind of losses that top teams have on their resume.

Nebraska then hosts Washington in week three, and while on the surface this looks as a game that could be a decent contest (after all, the Huskies did hand the Huskers a loss in last year's Holiday Bowl), one must keep in mind that the 2011 Huskies will bear almost no resemblance to the Washington teams of the past few seasons. We're only a few years removed from Washington's 0-12 season, and even with Jake Locker, Washington never finished above 7-6.

Nebraska finished off their non-conference schedule with a trip to 3-9 Wyoming, one of the worst teams in the Mountain West and the entire FBS.

Connecticut Huskies

It's hard to blame any team for belonging to a particular conference, especially when said conference affiliation makes perfect sense, as with Connecticut and the Big East. And it's not UConn's fault that the Big East is easily the weakest of the BCS Automatic Qualifying conferences.

But when you play a particularly weak conference schedule, you might think it would make sense to make up some schedule strength points with your non-conference games. Apparently, that line of thinking doesn't hold at Connecticut.

The Huskies open the 2011 season with what is sure to be a barn-burner against FCS Fordham.

All kidding aside, Fordham is yet another FCS program with a losing record that appears on an FBS schedule. In fact, Fordham hasn't had a winning season since 2007, and that was their first since 2003. Since 1989, Fordham has only had four winning seasons. Not exactly the cream of the FCS crop.

Week two puts the Huskies on the road to perennial SEC doormat Vanderbilt. This might actually be a decent game. If UConn was an SEC team, they'd fill just about the same role that Vandy currently does in that conference.

The last three non-conference battles for Connecticut include Iowa State, Buffalo and Western Michigan.

Playing multiple MAC teams in non-conference games will easily put you near the top of any “weak schedule” list.

For those who will undoubtedly point to Connecticut's scheduling of two BCS AQ schools, the simple counterpoint to the argument is that although UConn did in fact schedule two of them, they probably picked two of the best examples of conference bottom feeders they could find.

Wisconsin Badgers

The Big Ten wins their third selection on our list—tops for any conference.

Apparently, the Big Ten teams are taking a queue from their SEC counterparts, and Wisconsin is this season's best example.

The Badgers open 2011 with a game against the Rebels of UNLV. The University of Nevada basically pins its football hopes on their Reno campus, not their Las Vegas campus, as the Nevada-Las Vegas Rebels went just 2-10 last season—a far cry from Nevada-Reno's 13-1, which included a thrilling overtime win against Boise State.

UNLV hasn't seen a winning season or bowl game since 2000, and since that time, UNLV has finished the season with two wins five times, and with never more than six wins (once, in 2003).

Wisconsin, the defending Big Ten co-champions, host Oregon State in week two. While the Beavers aren't the worst of all possible opponents, they are nowhere near the top of anyone's list of good teams from good conferences. In fact, Oregon State's claim to fame over the past few seasons is the fact that once in a great while they seem to pull an improbably win out of thin air, and upset conference favorites (such as their 2008 win over USC). But Oregon State has been complete unable to find any sustained success or any sense of consistency over the past two seasons, and 2010 definitely had the Beavers headed in the wrong direction, finishing with a 5-7 record.

Wisconsin's third opponent for 2011 is from the MAC. The Big Ten currently has a contract with the MAC that states each Big Ten team will play at least one MAC team each season. While that usually means guaranteed wins for the Big Ten, Wisconsin gets a fraction of a brownie point this season, as they drew Northern Illinois. The Huskies are favored again this season in the MAC-West, and are coming off of an impressive 11-3 2010 season.

Still, we're talking about a MAC team that was 11-3 going up against the defending Big Ten champion. Wisconsin will win this game, but at least the match up doesn't quite feel as pitiful as the others.

If you think that means Wisconsin is out of the woods in terms of weak opponents, you're sorely mistaken. The Badgers have a fourth-straight week of sub-par opponents, when they welcome in FCS South Dakota.

The USD Coyotes were 4-7 last season in just their third season in the FCS after making the jump from Division II. South Dakota is so new to the FCS that in 2011 they will still play one Division II and two NAIA programs. Yet last season they still only managed four wins (of course, one of them was against Minnesota, which is either really great for South Dakota, or really bad for Minnesota—probably both).

The Sept. 24 meeting between the Badgers and Coyotes could end up being one of those games where no one feels good about themselves afterward, as Wisconsin should win this game by 70 points, and the strength, speed and size differential between the two sets of players will be staggering.

Wisconsin's horribly weak scheduling of what we'll call three-and-a-half programs far below the level of play Wisconsin is expected to reach in 2011 is the reason they're at the top of our list of teams that really do play a 2011 preseason college football schedule.