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SEC Scheduling and Adjusted W-L Records


sushihorn

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21 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

We all know what a joke the SEC's non-conference scheduling is.  We discuss it a lot in general terms.  The standard issue non-conf is 1 FCS school, 2 (usually lower tier) G5s and one P5 school.  In 2018, every school but LSU played an FCS team; Florida and Tennessee played 2 FCS schools.  And of course the FCS and G5 games are pretty much all home games as well.  That puts 3 automatic wins on the schedule every year.  The SEC sure dominated the Sunbelt and Southland conferences.  When you look at the records of the SEC against only P5 competition, the picture changes radically.

I went through the SEC schedules for this year.  Even knowing what I would find, I was surprised by how bad it actually was.  The only reason I'd heard of many of these schools was basketball.  Northwestern State?  Liberty?  Charleston Southern (was just Charleston already taken)?  Coastal Carolina?  I present SEC non-conference scheduling in its full, putrid glory:

 

Alabama: 11-1 adjusted vs P5 (14-1 with cupcakes); excluded the Citadel, AR St, ULa

LSU: 6-3 adjusted (10-3); SE LA, LA Tech, Rice, UCF

aggy: 6-4 (9-4); NW St, LA Monroe, UAB

MSU: 5-5 (8-5); SFA(FCS), U LA(G), La Tech(G)

Auburn: 5-5 (8-5); AL St(FCS), S Miss(G), Liberty

Ole Miss: 2-7 (5-7); SIU(FCS), Kent St(G), La Monroe(G)

Arkansas: 0-8 (2-10); Tulsa(G), E. IL(FCS), CSU(G), UNT(G)

 

Georgia: 8-3 (11-3); Austin Peay(FCS), MTSU(G), Umass(G)

Florida: 7-3 (10-3); Charleston Southern(FBS), CSU(G), Idaho(FCS)

Kentucky: 7-3 (10-3); C Mich(G), Murray St(FCS), MTSU(G)

Mizzou: 5-5 (8-5); TN Martin(FCS), WY(G), Memphis(G)

S. Carolina: 4-6 (7-6); Coastal Carolina(G), Chatanooga(FCS), Akron(G)

Vanderbilt: 3-7 (6-7); MTSU(G), NV(G), TN St(FCS)

Tennessee: 2-7 (5-7);  E. TN St(FCS), UTEP(G), Charlotte(FCS)

I'm stealing this for another board.

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17 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I say keep losses on there if they lose to an FCS or G5 team. So Arkansas is 0-10 instead of 0-8. No credit for wins, full credit for losses.

 

6 minutes ago, J.R. Juniors Junior Jr. said:

Games against G5 teams that finished in the top 25 (50?) should count towards the main record.  LSU's win over UCF, for example.

Thanks.  This was a first draft and both of those would improve the model.

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2 minutes ago, Spur08 said:

This doesn't mean much without comparison, correct?  What does it look like for the Big 12?

Texas had only Tulsa as a non-P5 opponents.  That means a 9-4 adjusted record.  OU's non-conf was FAU, Army and UCLA.  Technically 2 G5 teams but Army finished 11-2, ranked top 20 so that's like the UCF vis a vis LSU.  Call OU 11-2 adjusted.

I'm not sure of the value of trying to analyze the whole Big XII.  It was worthwhile doing it for the SEC because of the idiotic levels of jock sniffing by ESPN and others, which could be easily exposed by analyzing their schedules.  I don't see a comparable benefit from the Big XII because no on is saying we are part of the "greatest conference EVAR!"  Benchmarking the top Big XII teams to the same standard is sufficient IMHO.

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5 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

This doesn't even come close to documenting the SEC scheduling advantage. I've detailed it in some other threads, but it's a proven formula that inflates their finals records and guarantees them better rankings, which in turn gets them better bowl games, which equals more money. 

1. High Pre-Season Rankings and Rank as many teams ranked pre-season as possible. 

      A. Done with relationship with ESPN, writer affiliations, etc.

      B. Circle Logic (Auburn should be ranked #23 because SEC, SEC is good because of ranked teams)

2. Schedule "Big Game" early. Don't Lose Late

     A. Schedule a marquee OOC game (aka LSU v Texas) early in the year. If no big P5 scheduled, play conference game early (Alabama v South Carolina 9/14/2019)

     B. If you win, huge win vs ranked team. If you lose, early losses sting less than losing late. (remember how no one cared we lost to Maryland late. no on talked about it). And early loss to then ranked #23 Auburn looks less like a big deal even if Auburn craters and finishes 6-6. Why was Auburn ranked #23 again? See bullet point #1

3. Only 8 conference games. 

    A. Half the conference will have 1 less loss. Mostly the 9th game is replaced by an FCS team. That means instead of 7 losses for the SEC, they replace them with 7 wins. Why is A&M or Missouri ranked at 8-4 at the end of the season? Oh, they are 8-4 instead of 7-5. Instead of playing a conference opponent, they played Georgia Southern. 

 

Magic, the SEC gets more Bowl money

4. If your marquee early season P5 matchup begins to look competitive(Oregon), drop them like a hot rock and pick up some spare ACC school...like, I don't know, Clemson (if Clemson turns out to be good when the game is actually played, treat impending loss as your statement win for the season)

5. Rig the bowl match-ups for max advantage and still fall on your face. 

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24 minutes ago, Spur08 said:

This doesn't mean much without comparison, correct?  What does it look like for the Big 12?

Except the Big 12 doesn't thump its chest about how much harder the conference is and that it just means more.

Edited by Tex Pete
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53 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

We all know what a joke the SEC's non-conference scheduling is.  We discuss it a lot in general terms.  The standard issue non-conf is 1 FCS school, 2 (usually lower tier) G5s and one P5 school.  In 2018, every school but LSU played an FCS team; Florida and Tennessee played 2 FCS schools.  And of course the FCS and G5 games are pretty much all home games as well. 

Plus, most of the G5 matchups are against terrible G5 teams.

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3 minutes ago, Tex Pete said:

Except the Big 12 doesn't thump its chest about how much harder the conference is and that it just means more.

So, again, the only way to dispute that it's not more difficult is by comparison..

Just looking for the whole picture, folks. Seems ridiculous to have N = 1 regarding conferences.

Edited by Spur08
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2 minutes ago, Spur08 said:

So, again, the only way to dispute that it's not more difficult is by comparison..

Just looking for the whole picture, folks. Seems ridiculous to have N = 1 regarding conferences.

Then get to work and quit bitching. Sushi did half the comparison for you.

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Doesn't stop the media from talking up teams like msu like they are some kind of perennial national power. The sec has a lot of programs which are historically pretty good it goes about 5 deep. Tennessee hasn't been worthy of that kind of respect in a long time. Arkansas has been mostly terrible for 5-6 years but let them go 3-0 against some cupcakes and beat a school like Missouri and suddenly they will be top 15. Now that the Mississippi schools got investigated(sort of)they will go back to being the doormats they were for most of the previous 40 years.

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Ok then.  Sorry to hurt your feelings there tough guy.

 

Sushi -- The funny thing to me is when SEC West says they don't claim the East.  Based on your OP, the East seems to be the more well-rounded conference by comparison  

Edited by Spur08
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True or false, does the Sec wait til the bowl games are laid out and then choose which Sec team.plays where, setting up favorable matchups? When we were down,.last season for instance, I would have thought us playing A&M in Houston was a no brainer, instead we end up with a foul mouthed Missouri team. I found it very odd that the Texas bowl would not nut over a matchup between Texas and Aggie, which leads me to think maybe the Sec and Aggie said no way. Just another way the Sec gets the most bang for their buck.

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5 minutes ago, TtomTerrific said:

remember that year that somehow ESPN had the country believing that the two Mississippi schools were ranked 1 and 2  solely on the back of running over aggy?

that was cool. 

Same year sec had 4 out of the top 5 halfway into the season and all 4 lost big in their bowls as I recall.

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Top teams from the other 4 P5 conferences are generally in competition with the non-Bama SEC teams for poll position.  So that's the comparison I'm going to make:

 

Texas 9-4 adjusted (10-4); Tulsa excluded

OU: 11-2 adjusted; FAU

Ohio St: 12-1 (13-1); Tulane

Michigan: 8-3 (10-3); W Michigan, SMU

Washington: 8-4 (10-4); N Dakota, BYU

Washington St: 8-2 (11-2); Wyoming, San Jose St, E. Washington(FCS)

Clemson: 13-0 (15-0); Furman (FCS), GA Southern

Syracuse: 7-3 (10-3) Wagner (FCS), W Mich, UConn

 

This is mostly the group which gets comped to Georgia, Florida, LSU, Kentucky, Auburn, aggy, Mizzou and Miss St.  You can see how lopsided the scales generally are.

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Basically regarded Florida fans on the other board I frequent (Rivals College football soundoff) doesn't understand that playing 9 conference games would equal more losses for $EC teams. They think as a cross division game everyone would apparently get to play Vanderbilt and Arkansas. It was too complex for them to understand that had aggy and Swamp lizard played this year as a 9th conference game instead of UAB and Idaho that one of them would be going home with an extra L in the column. 

They then went on to say how Florida played a tougher schedule than Texas but after breaking that shit down I don't see how anyone rates their shit schedule harder than ours.

 

Maryland > Charleston So
Tulsa < Kentucky
USC > Colorado St
TCU > Tennessee
Kansas St. < Mississippi St. 
Oklahoma > LSU
Baylor > Vanderbilt 
Oklahoma St < Georgia 
WVU > Missouri
Texas Tech < S. Carolina (barely)
Iowa St. > Idaho
Kansas < FSU (not by much)
Oklahoma/Georgia >>>> Michigan

 

https://forums.rivals.com/threads/final-ap-sec-has-6-teams-ranked-mwc-3-teams-pac-2-teams.862247/page-5

Edited by RoyalBevo21
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1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

This doesn't even come close to documenting the SEC scheduling advantage. I've detailed it in some other threads, but it's a proven formula that inflates their finals records and guarantees them better rankings, which in turn gets them better bowl games, which equals more money. 

1. High Pre-Season Rankings and Rank as many teams ranked pre-season as possible. 

      A. Done with relationship with ESPN, writer affiliations, etc.

      B. Circle Logic (Auburn should be ranked #23 because SEC, SEC is good because of ranked teams)

2. Schedule "Big Game" early. Don't Lose Late

     A. Schedule a marquee OOC game (aka LSU v Texas) early in the year. If no big P5 scheduled, play conference game early (Alabama v South Carolina 9/14/2019)

     B. If you win, huge win vs ranked team. If you lose, early losses sting less than losing late. (remember how no one cared we lost to Maryland late. no on talked about it). And early loss to then ranked #23 Auburn looks less like a big deal even if Auburn craters and finishes 6-6. Why was Auburn ranked #23 again? See bullet point #1

3. Only 8 conference games. 

    A. Half the conference will have 1 less loss. Mostly the 9th game is replaced by an FCS team. That means instead of 7 losses for the SEC, they replace them with 7 wins. Why is A&M or Missouri ranked at 8-4 at the end of the season? Oh, they are 8-4 instead of 7-5. Instead of playing a conference opponent, they played Georgia Southern. 

 

Magic, the SEC gets more Bowl money

I'm just looking at a single aspect of the SEC hype machine here.  Already did other threads touching on their coaching and schemes.  I'm currently writing one on the SEC QB situation.  But I have no particular competence to analyze areas outside of game play and statistics.  I'm gonna leave the business, PR and media aspect to you and others.

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The genesis for the SEC knob slobbing has its roots in 3 events

1. Texas didn't get to play Florida in 2008

2. Colt injury v Bama

3. FL and LSU beating the piss out of tOSU

Then Bama took control and everyone is assumed to be better than they are just because they play in the same conf as Bama and they are allowd by default to get away with BS scheduling because SEC is so hard...

*honorable mention - Auburn cheating

 

Edited by dcar00
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1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

This doesn't even come close to documenting the SEC scheduling advantage. I've detailed it in some other threads, but it's a proven formula that inflates their finals records and guarantees them better rankings, which in turn gets them better bowl games, which equals more money. 

1. High Pre-Season Rankings and Rank as many teams ranked pre-season as possible. 

      A. Done with relationship with ESPN, writer affiliations, etc.

      B. Circle Logic (Auburn should be ranked #23 because SEC, SEC is good because of ranked teams)

2. Schedule "Big Game" early. Don't Lose Late

     A. Schedule a marquee OOC game (aka LSU v Texas) early in the year. If no big P5 scheduled, play conference game early (Alabama v South Carolina 9/14/2019)

     B. If you win, huge win vs ranked team. If you lose, early losses sting less than losing late. (remember how no one cared we lost to Maryland late. no on talked about it). And early loss to then ranked #23 Auburn looks less like a big deal even if Auburn craters and finishes 6-6. Why was Auburn ranked #23 again? See bullet point #1

3. Only 8 conference games. 

    A. Half the conference will have 1 less loss. Mostly the 9th game is replaced by an FCS team. That means instead of 7 losses for the SEC, they replace them with 7 wins. Why is A&M or Missouri ranked at 8-4 at the end of the season? Oh, they are 8-4 instead of 7-5. Instead of playing a conference opponent, they played Georgia Southern. 

 

Magic, the SEC gets more Bowl money

Number 3 doesn't even really capture the full impact of 1 less conference game.   Playing Cup Cake State in the second or third to the last week let's them get healthy and get a gimme win not just for each team, but for the conference.

So imagine a Texas team who  has only 1 loss heading into SEC cup cake weekend and Texas is competing to be top 4.  Texas wins a conference game and should do equally well in polls/SOS standings.  But half of conference teams who Texas beat will lose during this week (conference games) and so will drop in the polls and will also cause a drop in Texas strength of schedule.  Concurrently, every SEC team "rests", moves up in polls (or stays the same ) and reinforces their falsely high ranking.

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1 minute ago, ABSR said:

Number 3 doesn't even really capture the full impact of 1 less conference game.   Playing Cup Cake State in the second or third to the last week let's them get healthy and get a gimme win not just for each team, but for the conference.

So imagine a Texas team who  has only 1 loss heading into SEC cup cake weekend and Texas is competing to be top 4.  Texas wins a conference game and should do equally well in polls/SOS standings.  But half of conference teams who Texas beat will lose during this week (conference games) and so will drop in the polls and will also cause a drop in Texas strength of schedule.  Concurrently, every SEC team "rests", moves up in polls (or stays the same ) and reinforces their falsely high ranking.

This. Also, they'll keep doing it as long as it works. The humbling of Bama by Clemson is the perfect time to start hammering them. As long as Bama won the last game, they could make excuses. NOW is the time to break the SEC myth. 

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1 minute ago, ABSR said:

Number 3 doesn't even really capture the full impact of 1 less conference game.   Playing Cup Cake State in the second or third to the last week let's them get healthy and get a gimme win not just for each team, but for the conference.

So imagine a Texas team who  has only 1 loss heading into SEC cup cake weekend and Texas is competing to be top 4.  Texas wins a conference game and should do equally well in polls/SOS standings.  But half of conference teams who Texas beat will lose during this week (conference games) and so will drop in the polls and will also cause a drop in Texas strength of schedule.  Concurrently, every SEC team "rests", moves up in polls (or stays the same ) and reinforces their falsely high ranking.

correct. until they are punished for playing 2+ dogshit FCS/G5's this will continue.  yes, we have Kansas but SEC usually has at least one team impersonating Kansas every year.  this year it was Arkansas.  the other 9 teams are generally competitive.

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1 hour ago, RoyalBevo21 said:

Basically regarded Florida fans on the other board I frequent (Rivals College football soundoff) doesn't understand that playing 9 conference games would equal more losses for $EC teams. They think as a cross division game everyone would apparently get to play Vanderbilt and Arkansas. It was too complex for them to understand that had aggy and Swamp lizard played this year as a 9th conference game instead of UAB and Idaho that one of them would be going home with an extra L in the column. 

They then went on to say how Florida played a tougher schedule than Texas but after breaking that shit down I don't see how anyone rates their shit schedule harder than ours.

 

Maryland > Charleston So
Tulsa < Kentucky
USC > Colorado St
TCU > Tennessee
Kansas St. < Mississippi St. 
Oklahoma > LSU
Baylor > Vanderbilt 
Oklahoma St < Georgia 
WVU > Missouri
Texas Tech < S. Carolina (barely)
Iowa St. > Idaho
Kansas < FSU (not by much)
Oklahoma/Georgia >>>> Michigan

 

https://forums.rivals.com/threads/final-ap-sec-has-6-teams-ranked-mwc-3-teams-pac-2-teams.862247/page-5

Or you could've just looked at Sagarin's final rankings to see that Texas played the seventh-ranked schedule compared to 32 for Florida.

Edited by C-Man
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1 hour ago, sushihorn said:

Top teams from the other 4 P5 conferences are generally in competition with the non-Bama SEC teams for poll position.  So that's the comparison I'm going to make:

 

Texas 9-4 adjusted (10-4); Tulsa excluded

OU: 11-2 adjusted; FAU

Ohio St: 12-1 (13-1); Tulane

Michigan: 8-3 (10-3); W Michigan, SMU

Washington: 8-4 (10-4); N Dakota, BYU

Washington St: 8-2 (11-2); Wyoming, San Jose St, E. Washington(FCS)

Clemson: 13-0 (15-0); Furman (FCS), GA Southern

Syracuse: 7-3 (10-3) Wagner (FCS), W Mich, UConn

 

This is mostly the group which gets comped to Georgia, Florida, LSU, Kentucky, Auburn, aggy, Mizzou and Miss St.  You can see how lopsided the scales generally are.

It is amazing how the record suddenly seems to better reflect the quality of the team once the garbage teams are removed.

Granted just because a team is not Notre Dame (10-1 (12-1); Ball State, Navy) or P5 doesn't mean that team is garbage but it does provide a more accurate record.

Of course this would mean:

Army: 0-2 (11-2); Everybody not Duke and Oklahoma

UCF: 1-1 (12-1; Everybody not Pitt and LSU

Which seems harsh.

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13 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

 

correct. until they are punished for playing 2+ dogshit FCS/G5's this will continue.  yes, we have Kansas but SEC usually has at least one team impersonating Kansas every year.  this year it was Arkansas.  the other 9 teams are generally competitive.

Ole Miss was their KU impersonator.  Arkansas was the drag queen version...

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One could also make a case study of aggy and Missouri. 

Their w/l isn’t markedly different now with the sec schedule than it was with the big12 schedule, which was also 8 games at the time of their membership. 

aggy especially, and maybe Missouri as well, would want to argue that they’ve become better teams by virtue of their new league, in order to stay the same level of competitive in the tougher sec as they were in the b12. 

So then we take a look at bowl records, and what do we see?

Edited by Pato del Muerto
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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

One could also make a case study of aggy and Missouri. 

Their w/l isn’t markedly different now with the sec schedule than it was with the big12 schedule, which was also 8 games at the time of their membership. 

aggy especially, and maybe Missouri as well, would want to argue that they’ve become better teams by virtue of their new league, in order to stay the same level of competitive in the tougher sec as they were in the b12. 

So then we take a look at bowl records, and what do we see?

The BEST Aggie team since they joined the SEC was their first year with Johnny football.  Johnny and every player on that team signed on national signing day to play in the Big 12.   After that they became "SEC good", which means they never were as good as when they were a Big 12 team moving into the conference.

Missouri won the SEC East two times in the first three years in the SEC.  So their first East victory had Big 12 recruits as Sophomore, Juniors and Seniors.  The next had Juniors and Seniors.   They have sucked after this.

So BIg 12 recruits brought their highest success and SEC recruits brought mediocrity.

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https://texags.com/forums/5/topics/3014271

lulz

Quote
Iowaggie
 
AG
 
A 6-game SEC schedule might even be better as it would allow for 9 home games and all teams to conceivably be bowl eligible just by playing 6 self-selected non-conference games.

Think of the increased inventory for the SEC network (additional 12 games), and it really would just simplify scheduling.

Those people that want to replace a cupcake with another SEC opponent don't understand how tasty cupcakes are and are only thinking of seeing better and more relevant football games. But competition is not the point of college football, inflating records and attending bowl games are. Who would want to see the SEC East opponents more frequently and regularly when there are a whole lot of lower tier Sun Belt and C-USA schools that need a payout. People who would rather see A&M play a 3rd SEC East team each year instead of Northwestern St do not understand how thin the line is on the university making their athletic budget. I can't imagine the horror of looking at a 10-game SEC schedule, and getting 5 SEC opponents and 2 cupcake games at home . It could really jeopardize participation in the Texas Bowl.

I'm not sure why a 4-game schedule isn't being considered. With the potential of 10 home games, SEC teams will finally be able to make budget, and if teams schedule correctly, almost every team will win at least 9 games. Boo for turning on the TV and seeing games like Auburn vs South Carolina, and yay for having the options of Auburn vs the Citadel or South Carolina vs. LA Lafayette.
 

 

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ummmm...you conveniently forgot we opened with Miami (in Houston) this year.

 

in the very recent past our OOC schedule has been Wisky (2x...in Houston and Lambeau Field), TCU (in Dallas), BYU (Provo), Washington (home and home), West Virginia (Morgantown) and Oregon (Dallas)...both in the same season, Syracuse (at ‘Cuse), and a couple of more I can’t remember, including Miami this year.

 

note that only one of those was in Tiger stadium (Washington).

 

i’ll say til i’m blue in the face...we’ll play anyone, anywhere, and our track record proves that.

 

your premise fails re: LSU.

 

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4 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

ummmm...you conveniently forgot we opened with Miami.

in the very recent past our OOC schedule has been Wisky (2x...in Houston and Lambeau Field), TCU (in Dallas), BYU (Provo), Washington (home and home), West Virginia (Morgantown) and Oregon (Dallas)...both in the same season, Syracuse (at ‘Cuse), and a couple of more I can’t remember.

note that only one of those was in Tiger stadium (Washington).

i’ll say til i’m blue in the face...we’ll play anyone, anywhere, and our track record proves that.

your premise fails re: LSU.

Doesn't invalidate the premise of the OP at all.  It simply talks around the point.

In each of those years you cited, LSU played 1 good team in non-conference play.  They usually played 3 completely cupcakes also.  Which is why I said there are 3 automatic wins on the schedule, not 4 of them. 

Take 2014 for example.  Yes, LSU played a top 20 Wisconsin.  They also played Louisiana-Monroe, Sam Houston State and New Mexico State - all in Baton Rouge.  That's EXACTLY the sort of schedule I'm talking about.

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