(08-15-2020 08:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote: Apparently, some SEC coaches are complaining that favoritism was shown towards top teams like Alabama and LSU, protecting their national prospects by assigning them soft extra opponents. Of course the complainers are almost surely coaches of teams that got assigned tough extra games.
What this reminds me of is why the P5 will always want the G5 around and will not separate: Coaches want soft opponents to pad their records. NOBODY wants to play Ohio State, Alabama, or Clemson every week, that's a recipe for a very short coaching career.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/st...-opponents
Look at Alabama and L.S.U.'s schedules and you will see why they weren't assigned the toughest games for their 2 additional conference opponents. Coaches always gripe and complain.
Any West Division leader already plays a tough schedule; Alabama and L.S.U. have each other, Auburn, Texas A&M and the Mississippi schools physically beat you up because they are always strong on bug linemen and weak at the skill positions and in depth. Alabama plays Georgia this year and L.S.U. has Florida.
So who the hell else were they going to get? The AD's met with Saneky and they decided to base the two opponents on a S.O.S. priority. Remember each East and West team already plays two from the other division. So those two games were not redone. Alabama had Tennessee as their annual. Auburn has Georgia. L.S.U. has Florida. Nobody is dodging anyone.
So there were only 4 schools from the other divisions left to pick from for the top schools in the West. Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Missouri, South Carolina. Auburn has Kentucky on rotation this year. So Auburn got Tennessee and South Carolina. A team that finished middle of the pack last year in the West got two middle of the pack schools from the East to play.
The only story here is that Arkansas and Missouri stunk in the West and Vanderbilt stunk in the East and in a balanced SOS they wind up with top schools which have the highest S.O.S. to start with.
That's the end of the story.
The only issue here for Vanderbilt, Arkansas, and Missouri is that they lose 3 buy games and an OOC opponent and replace those 4 games with 2 more conference games. That part is brutal for these schools which are struggling to get to mid tier. They are essentially swapping 3 potential wins and an easier P game for 2 more losses. Of course they are grousing.