Writerbuckeye;799533 wrote: The discussion isn't about that, or about overall schedules. It's about OUT OF CONFERENCE scheduling.
Change the argument if you like, but Alabama is venturing north of the Mason Dixon Line for the first time since 1989 to play PSU this fall. I'd say that borders on ridiculous when it comes to insular scheduling. Florida hasn't been much better historically.
And if you want to discuss WHY the SEC is the strongest conference right now, we can have another discussion about oversigning and how it has allowed powers like Alabama and LSU, among others, to basically bring in an extra recruiting class every 4 years or so. That's a huge advantage and the dirty not so secret reason the SEC has risen to the top.
Hence the hilarity of "whinerbuckeye". The OOC schedule is
the argument
for you because you choose to isolate four games and then actually break it down even further to
one game because that is the only way for you to deal with whatever inferiority you're trying to overcome. It is just my experience or perception, so maybe it is wrong, but I see more people starting threads or conversations about why the SEC isn't the best or "as good as people think" (whatever that means) than I see SEC fans bring up the superiority of the conference. Sure, people are going to defend the conference against stupid arguments (for example, "ooooh, we play one good game a year and you guys don't leave a 17 state area"). So again, keep bringing up the one game OOC and continue to throw all the other stipulations around that you want if it makes you feel better.
As for Florida's schedule, there is really no reason to leave the south. Once again, if you take a look at the last 30 or so years, you're going to see multiple top five/top ten teams in nearly every season. Florida State finished in the top five for what, 17 straight years? That alone basically made their one "big" OOC game better than about 95% of the country's.
I've done it before and there really isn't any reason to any more, but if you were honest and you looked up every conference's OOC schedules for at least the last three decades you would see that top-to-bottom (you are making it about the whole conference, not me) there isn't a whole hell of a lot of difference between any of the major conferences. The difference that you don't like is that there are more southern teams who are considered traditional powerhouses (or whatever term you'd like to use), so there's plenty of OOC games to go around in the region. Ohio State basically rules its region so if they want to find "worthy" OOC competition, they can either schedule Notre Dame (although that is really debatable) or go outside the Midwest. Kudos for them for their one big game a year, but it doesn't make them any better or more brave or whatever than any other team across the country (especially when you consider how they balance that one game with the three gimmes).
As for your last point, I don't even really care if the SEC is "the best" or "the worst" or otherwise. You obviously can't stand it because you keep trying to find ways to diminish it. Oversigning isn't illegal. And as long as signees are straight on what could happen, I don't really give a shit. You are going to use a few disgruntled players' comments as fodder to call Alabama the evil empire, yet, when an OSU player speaks out about the wrongs there you'll immediately dismiss it because the player was just sour. There are plenty of ways that numbers/rosters sort themselves out and oversigning is a safety net (and it is within the rules). I don't condone lying to a recruit, but since neither you nor I were part of the recruiting process I'm not going to say that "Nick Saban promised this kid he'd (get this or that)" so that makes him a liar. A lot of kids have potential. A lot of kids don't reach that potential. That is on them, not the coach. Now when you can tell me what combination of impact players wouldn't have been on a particular team's roster to prove that oversigning was the key factor in a team's success, you might be onto something. In the meantime, you just continue to build that "whiner" reputation.
