The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced today they will no longer allow non-feature sports columnist to participate (vote) in the AP poll. Biases was one of the reasons given... Alabama Poly, apparently not learning from The Citadel fiasco, replacd Southern Miss on their schedule with another doozie 1-AA team... and Tommy still hasn't signed his contract... http://www.al.com/sports/birminghamnews/kscarbinsky.ssf?/base/sports/1108290329327440.xml http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/NEWSV5/storyV5tubrail12o.htm Lastly, I was told by one of those "in the know guys", who probably isn't, that Rice will be the Nov. 5th TBA game. Is this true? I wouldn't mind playing them on a 3-1 rotation. It was a good road trip and sure win.
Alabama Poly... where did that come from. I don't think Auburn has to worry about schedule analysis for a long time. They won't be in the hunt for any more national titles.
Even if they aren't in the hunt for a national title it could still effect them with their BCS rating and cost them a BCS Bowl, which would hurt the entire SEC. The D II school doesn't hurt them in the SOS as it isn't counted but it could hurt them in the coaches poll.
Prior to about 1960, Auburn was offically called Alabama Polytechnical Institute. Since the town had fewer syllables, easier to slur, "Alabama Poly" was called "Auburn" for years prior to the offical name change. Alabama Poly has a ring to it, kinda like a cow bell.
A couple of things: Just because you don't know how much something matters because it isn't explicit, doesn't mean it isn't counted or doesn't matter. SOS is the primary reason why AU was ranked third in the computer polls. All of them use some form of SOS either implicitly or explicitly and the D II team hurt them a lot. Assuming AU couldn't schedule a D1 team with terms anywhere near the D II team, this game means a lot financially to AU, probably 1.5+M range. Only not getting a 2nd team in the BCS costs the conference any significant money, and given these conditions, it's not likely to be worth much. A second team in the BCS is only worth an additional 4.5M. In net terms it's probably somewhat less; another SEC team may get into a bowl and there are some incremental travel allowances allowed. But to keep it simple just assume the 4.5. This is divided up 13 ways, so AU's share is about 0.35. But this assumes that AU would be the 2nd team if they scheduled a D1 team and beat them. This is possible, but the odds are pretty low. Assume 5%, and it's probably less than this, and the expected value is something like 17,000/team. Financially, it's clearly the right decision. But Lord help them if this comes close to happening.
Indy, you are pretty accurate in your acounts. the SEC could receive a little more than that if no non BCS conference school has a team in the BCS Bowls. And they do need to schedule an extra home game regardless of what the guy in the article says. He uses USC as an example of a team that only plays 6 homes games and they do that pretty ofetn and I've remarked many times I don't know how they do it. They must have a giant endowment fund for athletics. UT has been in the top 3 or 4 schools in generating revenue for a long time and their stadium has a lot to do with that along with the seat licenses they have been collecting money on for a long time now. OU I'm not sure of and was surprised to see they only have 6 homes games scheduled next year.
If by USC, you mean Southern Cal, you must remember that the Rose Bowl is a multi-use facility. Unlike most of the SEC football stadiums which are reliant on game revenues to cover their operational costs. BTW - the Citadel game did not cost AU the MNC. If you believe that, just keep on scarfing that media dog food. :hihi:
cajdav1, I don't know how those schools are set up financially. Private schools have a lot of flexibility. Stanford has a giant endowment. ND just has a general fund, whether it's for academics or athletics. If USC is simlar, maybe their recent success resulted in a win fall in donor contributions and they decided to splurge. Haven't got a clue about OK. The Big 12 has figured out the SOS game. You don't have to play anyone good to have a strong SOS, just don't play Div 2 and really bad teams. However, I do think it's important to play at least one decent OOC team. The voters and some of the models (well, I'm pretty sure at least one) uses OOC as a measure of conference strength.
The SOS that was used by the BCS until this past year was a very good proxy for the computer rankings as a whole. While not perfect you could pretty much rank order teams with the same number of losses by SOS with reasonable confidence. Can't say that AU would have made the CG, but if AU kept Bowling Green and Ok was forced to to go Div II, things would have gotten very interesting. AU's SOS would have been definitely been better than USC's. I would have to manually do the calcs to see how they would have ranked vs OK. I don't have the time or inclination to do so, but they would have really narrowed the gap, perhaps enough to split the computer rankings. In addition, the media would have been hammering OK instead of AU for scheduling Div II and that would have given them a fighting chance in the polls. It could have been closer than you think, but I don't think OK would have scheduled a Div II team; they would have just found another team to buy off; and this might have made it too difficult for AU to overcome.
