Kudos to Jon Solomon for this lovely juxtaposition:
In the 21-year history of the SEC’s eight-game format, Alabama possesses the third-easiest conference schedule and Auburn has the second hardest, according to an AL.com analysis of opponents’ SEC records. The easiest schedule belongs to Florida, which has the most SEC titles since the conference championship game started, and the hardest belongs to Vanderbilt.
“Nobody ever said it’s supposed to be fair,” said South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, a frequent critic of SEC scheduling.
Hell, he’s just nostalgic.
Get The Picture 
He is officially a cock now.
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Make that a dick.
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I would have expected him to say the easy win loss record was because the Gators didn’t play themselves. Or maybe take a shot at Georgia or Tennesee. He’ll round into form by September.
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One thing he failed to point out is that the top six teams are by default going to face the lower 6 teams right? This means math will prevail and the lower teams the upper ranked teams faced will have a lower winning percentage. It’s really kind of elementary, not rocket science at all.
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He didn’t ignore it.
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it’s one thing to mention it in passing and another entirely to base your entire thesis on the opposite. To dwell on such would have made his entire post pointless.
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Your exact words were “he failed to point out”. Sorry if I misunderstood.
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I would have also liked to see the numbers split by scheduling format. The pre-2002 format had several top 6 teams facing bottom 6 teams from the opposite division annually. Presumably upping to 2 rotating opponents would have evened the scheduling out some.
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OK, so Spurrier didn’t say it’s supposed to be fair…but he sure bitches and moans when it’s not fair to his team.
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Total differential between #1 and #12: 0.70
Total number of 12 teams SOS hovering within 0.25 of 0.500: 8
Hard to see any significance in that spread, but I am not a stats guy. Any mathletes here want to do a reverse correlated mean differential inverse coefficient thingy on those numbers to see if they represent anything other than random noise within an expected range?
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Shouldn’t someone mention vis-a-vis easiest schedules that UGA is a scant .002 behind the leader FU and a scant .004 ahead of Bama? Just sayin.’ And to think that all these years I thought the SEC had it in for the Dawgs.
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Until Stevie’s lost mental capacity in his older years led him to mumble and whine, no one ever challenged the difficulty of SEC schedules. It is a pretty dumb thing to do. While Spurrier and Miles have been whining the focus is off how tosu and Meechigan have waltzed to dozens of Top 10 rankings while only playing 1-2 teams a year that has comparable athletes, and one of those are against each other. Big 10/11/12 schedules have always been a joke, and they still are. Wasn’t much different on the West Coast before Oregon and Stanford became legit programs.
Pretty dumb on the part of folks in the southeast to turn their guns on themselves; there are many other areas that should have that discussion. And after playing 8 conference games, you get the chance to play the champ from the other division in the SECCG. That game is probably tougher than any team the rest of the country has faced all year. The whole argument about SEC scheduling is silly, some years are easier than others because of normal fluctuations of program strength but no SEC champ is undeserving of respect.
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If you read down to the bottom, you see that the article confirms Spurrier’s points about the good fortune that Georgia has had in the past two years. In 2011, Georgia played the easiest SEC schedule of any team to make the conference title game. In 2012, UGA played the third-easiest slate in history. In 2010, South Carolina was one of only two teams in the past nine years to make the title game while playing SEC opponents whose aggregate record was over .500.
And if you want to take shots at Spurrier for playing easy schedules when he was winning conference titles at Florida, here are Florida’s ranks in the SEC in strength of schedule according to college football reference:
2000 – 1
1996 – 4
1995 – 3
1994 – 2
1993 – 2
1991 – 1
As was the case when he was making fun of Ray Goff for turning excellent recruiting classes into mediocre teams, Spurrier is right.
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A certain phrase by the Dude comes to mind here…
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Steve is probably a hypocrite. That’s the point. It’s ok to whine non-stop about it until it doesn’t help your team…at that point the answer changes to ‘nobody said it was fair.’? That’s not arguing for an answer, it is arguing for an advantage…and it’s not taking a shot to point that out.
By the way, the 2011 team is an interesting study. The 2011 South Carolina team played a schedule where the combined winning pct of the teams were .422. If they had won another game OR UGA had lost, they would have made the division championship against a schedule of .406, which would have been 7th easiest of all time in 2011. So, you see, he doesn’t really give a rat’s behind on whether a team plays an easy schedule and gets to the championship game…all he cares about is that it was a little easier than his that year.
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Sorry, whining about schedules is beneath Steve, any other SEC coach. You play the hand you are dealt, just like this season when he seems to have the edge. I know Steve well, and for many years, I have watchef him lose what made him the best, or one of the best, cfb coaches ever. He has lost his discipline, and he has become an excuser maker in his time at SC. I defended him when he was arrogant, but still a man. He has lost what made him great and I stand by that description of him now. He should have left when he was at the top, like Paterno, his legacy has been tarnished.
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He used to relish a tough schedule. He crowed about it when he was successful. I like that Steve Spurrier very much. Not so much this one. But in his defense, he never really complained that Jacksonville was hotter than Gainesville either! 🙂
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Yes, his attitude was bring all you have for 60 minutes, come and get it. This isn’t the same guy, Columbia has gutted him. Wish he had stayed away from the college game when he left Gainesville and not tarnished his reputation.
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So if Spurrier has lost his fastball and yet he has won three straight against Georgia – a program with every possible advantage over South Carolina – then what does that say about Mark Richt?
And if you think that Spurrier didn’t find subjects about which to complain when he was at Florida, then perhaps you have forgotten the aftermath of the 1996 and 2001 Florida-FSU games. He’s always been this way, but his IQ is higher than that of the average coach (his battles of wits with Phil Fulmer were no contest at all), so his criticisms are usually more interesting.
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Sorry, I don’t think you can assign a W/L to a coach directly in all, or most, game outcomes. I fully understand that a coach is a critical piece of the puzzle but do you really think a coach is all that matters? Whether a receiver catches or drops a pass? Whether the long snapper makes a mistake on a key FG, punt, XPoint? etc., etc., etc.. etc, etc,……… You don’t need to lecture me on what Spurrier is, or was. I think I know the man very well, and there has been a huge change in his time in Columbia. Doesn’t mean you cannot find specific ways he is still the same human but he has evolved…..in a negative way. You are entitled to own view but the above comment from you does nothing to change the facts as I see them.
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In addition to the bad teams not playing themselves, (which he points out), the same applies for the good teams not having to play themselves. The analysis is a bit of a tautology.
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