SEC football: It’s time to stop scheduling FCS opponents
One of the biggest knocks against SEC football schedules is the continued practice of scheduling FCS opponents during the regular season.
SEC football fans love to brag about the downright nastiness of playing an SEC conference schedule, and in most cases, they are absolutely correct. Up and down the league the competition is tougher than any other conference in the nation.
However, when it comes to overall strength of schedule, some teams may seem to be watered down a bit due to the practice of scheduling FCS opponents in the non-conference slots. Worst of all, there are still SEC teams who schedule these cupcake games late in the season as a warmup (or semi-bye week) for a big rivalry game.
The Big Ten — one of the conferences who loves to toss barbs in the SEC’s direction — ended FCS opponents on their schedules only to give in and allow them to once again be scheduled back in 2017.
In 2019, only 16 Power-5 schools did not play an FCS opponent, and none of them were from the SEC.
Eleven of them were from the Big Ten.
It’s time to swing the pendulum in a different direction and make the SEC the rule rather than the outlier.
No more FCS cupcakes, please, Commissioner Sankey.
There are plenty of other Power-5 schools that can and will schedule the FCS schools and provide them with the fat wad of cash needed to keep their smaller programs running. The SEC should be more concerned with maintaining its standing as the premier college football conference in the nation, not subsidizing smaller, weaker schools via a yearly vestigial sacrifice.
Take Alabama for instance. The Crimson Tide had a heck of a schedule coming into the 12th week of the 2019 season. Then, the week before the mighty Iron Bowl game, they welcomed Western Carolina to Tuscaloosa to the tune of a 66-3 whipping. The perfect tune-up for Auburn?
Not so. The Tide ended up losing the Iron Bowl and any shot at the College Football Playoff the following week. If Alabama had played a more worthy opponent — even a pedestrian Group of Five team — would they have been better off going into their big rivalry game? Who’s to say the “week off” against an FCS team didn’t hurt them in the end.
How about defending national champion LSU? The Tigers played … ok, make that destroyed … FCS opponent Northwestern State in the third week of the season. A cupcake in an early-season matchup can almost be forgiven. The Tigers went on to roll through the rest of their schedule en route to a championship.
Despite the undefeated record after the SEC Championship Game, there were still those who felt LSU was undeserving of its No. 1 ranking and playoff seed.
Would it have been that much more difficult for LSU to schedule a Group of Five opponent to stave off the naysayers once playoff selection time came around?
In the 2018 National Championship game, Alabama and Georgia faced off, giving way to much gnashing and wailing by the rest of the country who believed that the combined lack of strength showed by playing Samford and Mercer between the two teams was another example of “SEC bias” in playoff team selection.
Especially since, once again, Alabama opted for their FCS game (Mercer) in late November.
The SEC has nothing to lose by eliminating FCS schools from the schedule, and everything to gain by forcing those residing in other conferences to find a different reason to doubt how good SEC football truly is.
Cupcakes are for leagues who need to feed off the weak in order to enhance their image and appease their boosters. That’s not who the SEC is or should ever appear to be.