Regular Season Bowl Games

I love it when two really good teams play each other early in the season in a big, nationally televised non-conference game. Cause it’s two teams that are so good that they will probably be playing in a bowl game on New Year’s Day and we get to see this high quality game during the regular season. When it’s two of the nation’s elite teams, from different parts of the country, that could have taken the easy approach and scheduled cupcakes that would be guaranteed wins, but instead they scheduled a fellow college powerhouse school in a game that would literally be a tossup of a contest that each team would have an equal chance of winning (or losing).

Specifically, I am tossing out props to Rose Bowl champion Michigan State for scheduling a fellow national power conference, power team the Oregon Ducks at Oregon in a game just finished today (Oregon won 46 – 27). Props also to Oregon for scheduling Michigan State. One of these teams was gonna have a loss after today and you’ve got to give them credit for taking the risk.

Other teams worth crediting for early season scheduling of significantly risky opponents. LSU and Wisconsin for scheduling each other last week. Oklahoma State and defending national champion Florida State. All of these teams are perennial big time power conference teams that usually play bowl games on or after New Year’s Day.

There are many other teams out there that are not doing this. No one has the option of who within their conference that they will be scheduled to play. Your conference is your conference, and the teams within it are who they are. But the non-conference games (the ones whose scheduling that they have control over) are the ones where some teams are purposely scheduling as many cupcakes as possible for their non-conference opponents . It is obvious that they are trying to pad their records with as many guaranteed wins as possible and we the public can see through their scheduling cowardice.  Do you think we don’t know what you are doing when you schedule the Lamar’s, the Sam Houston State’s and The Citadel’s of the world?

So I am hoping that the teams that did the honorable thing and scheduled first class non conference opponents are rewarded for their scheduling courage when college football names its top four teams in the NCAA’s first post BCS playoff format. The same way college basketball seems to reward teams’ strength of schedule and RPI when they name their tournament teams.
It will only reward the integrity of the playoffs if the BEST teams are the ones who are in them. And the best don’t shy away from playing difficult teams. They schedule them. And then they beat them. And when two really good teams play each other, great games are the result. And the real people rewarded are the fans.