Ok, for starters as about 100 people have pointed out, Florida’s strength of schedule in the years they won the national championships is better than any other national champions …without exception. If Florida isn’t deserving, i guess no other champions are either.

I heard you with the pathetic complaint “I’m not talking about strength of schedule look at their OOC schduling.” Let me ask you this. If Florida’s schedule is consistently better than most of the other major schools with this OOC system, why are you complaining about it? Why not go tell USC to stop scheduling San Jose State so that maybe they can get a strength of schedule equal to Florida’s. Why not tell Ohio State to stop scheduling Akron and Toledo so that they can maybe match Florida’s strength of Schedule? Go complain about Texas’ game against UTEP. If Florida’s strength of schedule is already tougher than the above, why should they be the one’s to schedule more aggressively?

You can’t draw some stupid artificial distinction between conference games and OOC games. It doesn’t matter where your losses come, you won’t be playing for the national championship if you have too many.

Florida doesn’t get to play Northwestern, Indiana, Michigan State, Illinois, and Minnesota in conference. Nor do they play Baylor, Iowa State, Colorado, and Kansas, and Texas A&M. Find me 4 or 5 teams that weak in the SEC…it’s not possible. The fact is an SEC schedule is tougher than any non-SEC conference schedule. That’s why Florida can schedule weak OOC games and still end up with a tougher Strength of Schedule rating.

You have to look at the whole schedule. Complaining about only OOC scheduling is like going out to dinner and having the best steak you’ve ever eaten…then complaining about the bread before your meal. The other major conferences ruin your steak and then complain about our bread. Thank God, i’m an SEC fan.

and i like how you tried to make an argument for tcu with their weak ass teams being “bowl eligible” but you tried talking down texas’ win against a 7-4 ucf team.

moron.

Florida’s AD Foley who does the scheduling smartly realizes that the school DOESN’T NEED to schedule anyone out of conference; it doesn’t help the gators’ SOS EITHER WAY! Doesn’t matter, if they schedule Texas, TCU, Boise, Utah, or even USC for that matter. There is nothing to prove, and I will repeat: it DOES NOT help our SOS. Why would your team need to that, when your SOS typical is in the top 5 annually?

Now I have a question for you:

Who did TCU play? WHO again?

Who does Boise play? And why do they deserve more credit?

Who does Texas play, for that matter? They played Baylor last week. Baylor! No one talks about how they have FLOATED through their easy SOS.

Who does USC play, or Ohio State? And have they ever been forced to play a conference title? NO..

You’re a whiny hater dude, get over it..

They proved their mettle on the field…where it counts. You don’t do that on paper.

“The number of ranked SEC teams year in and year out is fairly consistent to be sure, but that only means the conference is top-heavy, not that they’re the best. Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and (sometimes) Ole Miss are just as bad as any other power conference’s bottom-four. The SEC also has the benefit of having 12 teams, giving it better odds of having more teams with good enough records to get ranked (especially if they’re all guilty of some weak scheduling too) and leaving them with some perennial losers for the usual eight teams to beat consistently. Baylor, Iowa State and Duke all agree with me”

Actually, one of the SEC’s strength is the depth of its conference. The worst of the SEC are typically still competitive teams, and much better than the other conferences bottom of the barrel. Even the historically very worse, Vandy and KY, have had winning records and bowl appearances of late

Looking at the same ranking site from last year, pre bowl game

http://www.mratings.com/cf/arch/compare2008-15.htm

Rankings were as follows

Ole Miss 26 (and they beat a highly ranked TTech team)
Vandy 52
Kentucky 64
Miss St 92

(Actually TN 62 Ark 65 and Aub 73 were lower than Vandy, but all of those are historically good teams in down years)

Lets look at the Big 12 bottom of the barrel

TA&M 85
KSt 79
Col 71
Baylor 66

Big 10+1 bottom 4:

Indiana 103
Michigan 90
Purdue 75
IL 61

Pac 10 bottom 4:

Wash: 114
Wash St 113
UCLA 83
Stanford 63

The only conf that compares favorably is (surprisingly) the ACC

Duke 70
VA 54
NC st 48
MD 43

Finally, this statement makes absolutely no sense:

“The SEC also has the benefit of having 12 teams, giving it better odds of having more teams with good enough records to get ranked”

WTF?? Yes, with more teams, on balance you will have more highly ranked teams and more lower ranked teams. Fun with numbers. So what? As I demonstrated above, in spite of the greater number of teams and the potential for higher dispersion, the bottom the SEC compares favorably to other conferences.

Strength of Schedule – There are scores of polls, human, computers, etc that use varying assumptions. This particular site compiles dozens of them

http://www.mratings.com/cf/arch/compare2008-15.htm

This particular link was after UF won the 2008 SEC championship, and based upon a composite of all these polls, UF was number 2 going into the MNC game – and of course defeated the #1 team per this poll. So by any objective quantifiable criteria, UF was one of the top 2 teams going into the final game.

2. As a Gator fan, I have been critical of occasionally scheduling a chump or two, but that said, we play FSU, an out of conference in state rival, every year. While still competitive, FSU has been down a bit the past few years, but still is one of the top teams in the nation if you look at the past 15-30 years spans. I can only think of a couple of other examples of teams that have consistently scheduled such a recurring rival

Miami vs FSU (note both play in a much easier ACC conference

USC vs Notre Dame (Notre Dame has historically not been to the level of FSU)

GA vs GA Tech (Ga Tech has not consistently that high)

South Carolina / Clemson (SCe or Clemson has not been a top 10 team in a long time

Finally, conferences like the Pac 10 and Big 10+1 don’t have conference championships. Such games often guarantee you add one more top 10, or occasionally even top 5 opponent to the schedule. This has really been the difference of why the SEC and Big 12 gets into the top game. If you win, it rightly boosts your SOS. However, it does add a level of risk – ala undefeated OK getting b1tch slapped by K St years ago (and still going to BSC title anyway) or favored TN losing to underdog LSU in 2001.