The Goat Pen

hedge wrote:Your respective gradings of SEC schedules vs. Big10 schedules seems to be very imaginative...

If you like, go ahead and find me a Big10 team playing a schedule as shitty as Vanderbilt or Mississippi state.

Or you can take the same opinion as AA and Van Nostron and suggest that Vanderbilt should be allowed to play four junior high teams and still have those games towards bowl eligibility; Because they already have to play Ole Miss, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri every year, and asking them to play anyone better than Old Dominion OOC is suicide.

That's not what I said. I said that over the last 75 years Vandy is one of the 5 worst teams in all of college ball. If playing four tomato cans OOC makes their fans happy, then who cares? But hey, if Vandy runs the table, their weak OOC will probably keep them outta the 4-team playoff- so there is that! :::rolls eyes:::

In fact, most years Temple is probably even with (or better than) Vandy and has a better chance at beating the Dores than any one of Ohio States OOC foes have in beating the Buckeyes. Vandy, despite a couple of years of mild success with Franklin, is essentially a SunBelt caliber team. Let Arkie State play Vandy's entire schedule and sports writers would be writing sonnets about Red Wolves' bravery.

I really don't have a dog in this fight, but just at first glance, it does seem a bit, I don't know, pedantic (or something) to fault Vandy (Vandy!) for scheduling a few gimmes. I mean for christsake, it's Vandy. And while I do appreciate your sassing of Tennessee, they are traditionally much stronger than they have been of late. So even if Vandy does get to play 2 or 3 teams in the SEC that they may have a chance of beating (but still not gimmes), they don't deserve to be raked over the coals for a somewhat soft OOC schedule...

hedge wrote:I really don't have a dog in this fight, but just at first glance, it does seem a bit, I don't know, pedantic (or something) to fault Vandy (Vandy!) for scheduling a few gimmes. I mean for christsake, it's Vandy. And while I do appreciate your sassing of Tennessee, they are traditionally much stronger than they have been of late. So even if Vandy does get to play 2 or 3 teams in the SEC that they may have a chance of beating (but still not gimmes), they don't deserve to be raked over the coals for a somewhat soft OOC schedule...

I am looking at schools I would consider Vandy's real peers, schools in similar situations: Northwestern, Duke, Wake Forest, Stanford, Baylor, and maybe BC, and comparing Vandy's scheduling with theirs. And in comparison, it's really bad.

I will say that Baylor has been even worse than Vandy in dumbing down their schedules and shows no signs of changing that, even after playing in a BCS Bowl.

So after how many straight years of bowl games and 9-win seasons does it no longer become acceptable to play the "I'm a scrappy underdog, I deserve all the help I can get" card?

I can understand them not wanting to play one-game visits to Michigan or Ohio State like they used to do but cancelling games with Northwestern? They backed out of a series against Wake Forest for God's sake. Charleston Southern was their replacement for Wake.

Vandy has had two 9-win seasons and has went to Birmingham, Memphis and Nashville for a bowl recently. They have never been to a BCS bowl. Unlike Stanford, Baylor...hell Northwestern went to the Rose Bowl in 1995 and has been to the Citrus more recently than that. Wake went to a BCS bowl. As bad as all those teams have been. None are as bad as Vandy over any decent length of time.

Wake is no slouch. Ask Florida State...

If Vandy wins 11 game this year and people are considering them for a major bowl or the playoff, I will join DSL in hatin' on the Dore sched. If the fruits of their labors result in a trip to Birmingham for a bowl, well, I couldn't care less.

<DSL>Only foul fruits can be reaped from foul labors...</DSL>