AU's Final Strength of Schedule. . .

[LegalEagle 22]

I expected this would be the case:

http://www.al.com/sports/huntsvilletimes/j...52163238250.xml

Hey, USC can't say they beat the No. 2 team in the nation, because we're it!

WAR EAGLE

[Tigermike 2,603]

In case any of the "this is a down year for the SEC" crowd does not bother to read the article. The headline says:

Statistics seem to show level of SEC football was high

Good Lord, how could that be? When Auburn won!

[IrishWarEagle 0]

Statistics seem to show level of SEC football was high

Kinda reminds me of when Jay Leno does that Headlines thing on his show.

This just in

Scientists find that air is pretty necessary for living!

DUH!!

[auee90 0]

Here's a link to the NCAA SOS list: http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/Internet/toughe...9games_past.pdf .

[TitanTiger 18,182]

They only like to look at the SOS ratings from the computer pollsters like Sagarin. Yeah, like that bozo knows what he's doing. I don't know if his formula has undergone a lot of changes over the years, but anytime you have Harvard ranked #37 overall and over teams like Alabama, Arkansas, Bowling Green, Minnesota, South Carolina, Memphis, and UAB, you gotta ask what the hell he's been smoking.

I mean, congrats Harvard on that 10-0 record this year, but anyone who thinks Harvard would have been anything more than a bug on the windshield of the aforementioned teams needs to back away from the bong.

[jaydubb121 22]

We beat seven of the teams in the top 30(SOS-wise). How did that not help us in the BCS?

[auee90 0]

This is kinda going off on a tangent, but I was looking over the NCAA list, where they have our past opposition at 76-47. I don't know how they came up with that. Not counting Citadel, counting Tenn. twice, and counting Va. Tech, I'm getting 80-62, or .563 and a ranking of 30 (including the games we played against them) and 80-50 (not including our wins over those teams), or .615, and a ranking of 7. I am counting the wins/losses of our opposition against 1-AA teams (like Miss. St. losing to Maine). Maybe that's the difference. If it is the I-AA games that should not be counted, then that would make our opposition 4-3 against I-AA to get the result the NCAA came up with. Besides Miss. St./Maine, I don't know what other I-AA games our opposition has lost. I am seeing 5 other I-AA wins our opposition had (La.-Monroe beat FL-International & FL-Atlantic, Va. Tech beat FL A&M, UGA beat Ga. Southern, and Bama beat W. Carolina). So that would make 75-49. So how do you think they are calculating the W-L of our opposition to come up with 76-47?

[TitanTiger 18,182]

Because, as I mentioned, the SOS that everyone was looking at were the ones that the various computer polls showed...and they had Auburn (and the SEC in general) rated very low. The NCAA has our SOS ranked above USC and OU, but Sagarin for instance had our schedule ranked somewhere in the 70s, which is crap. And you know it's crap when you start analyzing how he rated the different teams. Ranking Harvard above teams like Alabama, Arkansas, and the others I mentioned shows that there is a critical flaw in his SOS formula. Any of those teams would smother Harvard, regardless of the Crimson's 10-0 record.

[auee90 0]

TT, I would also add that wins against the lower-tiered teams are all about equal. Wins against the 52nd ranked team or the 117th ranked team (or any I-AA team) should all carry about the same weight for teams ranked in the top-25. The very top teams should have no problem with anyone outside the top-25. If they do, then they aren't a top-ranked team (look at Miami, who was ranked there before). So the real difference in quality wins/SOS, is in how many 9+ win teams a team beat, how many top-10's, how many top-25's, etc.

Sometimes it's the luck of the draw in the quality of your opposition (aside from OOC scheduling of low quality teams like those from Louisiana or the I-AA division). I expected Ole Miss to be better than a 4-win team, and Arkansas to be better than a 5-win team. They weren't, and that's the way it goes. The same can be said of teams that were better than expected (like Bowling Green for OU). The fact that these computer polls put too much weight on the lower end of the spectrum vs. the higher end is a flaw in my opinion.