Auburn and FSU Prove That It Pays to Schedule Down

Finally after many years of crap out-of-conference scheduling by a majority of major conference powers there began to be some backlash against the practice earlier this year. Even in the mighty SEC we had writers knock the lesser opponents that litter SEC schedules while fans began to rumble about paying top dollar for tickets against opponents that leave something to be desired. Of course the schools attacked for doing this practice were chosen without consistency--Louisville and Ohio State for example received the lion's share of abuse--and we ended up in the national title games with two programs that refuse to play a challenging schedule. But instead of anger against those two there is more of a sense of "well at least Ohio State did not make it" and that is awful. Florida State, which cannot even claim to play a strong in-conference schedule, played Nevada, Idaho, FCS member Bethune-Cookman and Florida. Now some would say that playing Florida is brave but that is only true when the Gators are good and scheduling three guaranteed wins and at worst a 50-50 game is ridiculous. This is especially so when you also play the programs in the ACC that are regional squads at best and should not pose a problem to a national program like FSU. Miami and Clemson are the only programs with aspirations to compete for major bowls every year and Miami is currently in a strange place due to the NCAA investigation. How could FSU not go undefeated? Auburn played Washington State, Arkansas State, FCS member Western Carolina and Florida Atlantic. You could argue that if they played a tougher schedule they would not have made the title game since they barely beat WSU at home in game one. SEC teams always get a pass because of how tough it is to play in the conference but wins over Arkansas, Mississippi State and Tennessee were not impressive and the Tigers barely beat the good but not great Mississippi, Georgia and Texas A&M squads. The outlier is Alabama but that is a rivalry game. Auburn did have to beat Missouri in the conference title game but again they were rewarded for not playing anyone early in the season. What's ironic is that these teams once played each other during a time period, not long ago, when major conference teams played tough schedules. I'll break down the former Auburn-FSU rivalry, one that was sacrificed 20 years ago once Florida state joined the ACC.