Not sure why they chose 2008.. In 2007 LSU played #7 Florida & won, Bama lost to Georgia & of course lost to then #3 LSU.
That bottom graphic is interesting. A one game difference in the total of top 10 ranked SEC teams played. Out of curiosity I looked at the two teams SEC records over the same period—2007 to present. LSU has 15 conferences losses, Bama has 10. One thing that jumped out to me is six of those 15 losses came to a combination of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky teams. Three teams Alabama hasn't dropped a game with and have played an equal amount of times. Bama has three losses LSU doesn't share: Miss. State, A&M, and UofSC. Again, there is no argument to the disparity of the 2013 schedule. There is more parity found over the last six seasons than is being discussed as evidenced by the first comment.
Hold on a second here. "They would have to schedule 18 Top 25 teams in the next 2 seasons, just to catch up with the heavy lifting LSU has been doing..." Playing teams that were ranked at the time Bama faced them, the record since 2005 is 29-16-0. ------------- Worth noting about the 17 losses for LSU, only two are OOC—Penn State and Clemson.
Time for the SEC to take away Alabama's annual guarantee game against Tennessee (Scarbinsky) With all due respect to UT AD Dave Hart, who’s made it part of his mission to preserve that game on an annual basis, the Tide vs. the Vols is no longer a rivalry. It’s a guarantee game. When they play in Knoxville, Tennessee gets a crowd and a bruise, and Alabama gets a win. When they play in Tuscaloosa, Tennessee gets nothing but a bruise, and Alabama gets another win. Meanwhile, while Alabama’s using its permanent cross-division game as a breather to prepare for LSU, LSU has to go through Florida before it even gets to Alabama. Auburn has to prepare for Alabama by climbing into the ring with Georgia. This year, Alabama plays Tennessee and Kentucky from the East, two programs that were so bad last year they fired their head coaches. LSU gets legitimate contenders Florida and Georgia. Advantage, Alabama. Again. Tennessee is the real problem here. The Vols haven’t lived up to their history as one of the upper-echelon programs in the league in years. Beyond promoting basic fairness, rotating two cross-division opponents every year also would help realize Saban’s dream that every player in the league should get to play every other team in the league at least once during his college career. So it would be a win-win deal, unlike the current set-up, which is winning for only one of the SEC West’s traditional powers. It’s the team in crimson, which gets to wipe its feet on the team in orange on or about the Third Saturday in October every year.
If UT and Bama care so much about that game, then let them use up an OOC slot, outside the rotation, and don't have the game count toward the SEC record unless it's part of the rotation.
I've suggested the same and wouldn't have an issue with that in the least. With that in mind I can imagine we'd hear "Bama never plays tough OOC games" often. One thing I have against how the LSU argument is being framed has to do with what it means in terms of the SEC. If it was said, "it has a bearing on our bowl games" I'd concede that point immediately. Making Florida a point about the SEC schedule makes me pause a bit and ask, "when has a loss to Florida kept LSU out of the SECCG?"
That game nearly cost us both our BCS crystals. You could argue that it didn't, but there was a very thin line between us and our championships, and they both came down to Florida, in one way or another.
The supposed concept of the BCS was to crown an undisputed national champion. We were told that split NCs were now a thing of the past...until it happened. There were also those who said that an undefeated team from the SEC would never be left out of the title game...until it happened. Point being that when a flawed system is in place, saying that a plausible scenario allowed by the system hasn't happened yet is a very weak argument for keeping the system in place, because given enough time, it will eventually happen. Even assuming a loss to Florida would never cost us an SECCG or NCG appearance, I'm philosophically deadset against 4 schools holding the schedules of the remaining 10 hostage to maintain two games that nobody outside those fanbases could care less about.
Come on! It has a bearing on winning the West Division and getting into the SECCG. If LSU has to play two east division, top-10 contenders and loses them, while Bama gets to blow away two east division, losing record cupcakes, then LSU could beat Bama and still lose the West Division. All teams are not created equal in the SEC or any other league. Traditional rivalries be damned. In the best interests of the league, rotating opposite division opponents is the only equitable solution.
