Tennessee played Cal; Arkansas played USC; Ole Miss played Wake; Florida played FSU; Georgia played Ga Tech; USC played Clemson; Kentucky played Louisville; Vandy played Michigan; MSU played West Virginia; LSU played Arizona, Auburn played Wash St, Alabama played Hawaii.
Some were better than others, but it looks to me that in this year of 12 games, every SEC school played a real OOC opponent.
i think the knock the SEC gets is that for every D 1 BCS school an SEC team schedules, there's also a Buffalo, Western Carolina, Ark. ST, ULL, etc...on the schedule as well.
then you take a look at USC who's ooc schedule was in reality...RIDICULOUS. they had ARK, NEB and ND.
and won all three. combine that with wins over Oregon and Cal...pretty signfiicant scheduling on their part.
Bottom line is what USC did this year is the exception not the rule, most big time programs schedule cream puffs at some point...Michigan played Vandy (an SEC team yes, but c'mon, do they really get cred for that?) and Ball St. FL played FSU and Western Carolina. LSU played AZ, but also ULL, and Tulane.
Auburn played Wazzou, but also had ARK st and Buffalo...
So at the end of the day, the ooc SOS for the SEC isn't as bad as some would have us think, but it's also not as good as some of us SEC homers proclaim it to be either.
the other thing is that none of these big time programs in BCS leagues want to make it a habit of playing each other in non confenerence games regularly either...recruiting borders are at stake, chances at NT at stake, home game revenue at stake etc, etc, etc...seriously, if you are truly one of the big boys...with these 90,000 plus seat stadiums....you're going to sell that out each week regardless of who you play...so why give up a weekend of that kind of revenue so you can go on the road one extra week a year just for SOS ranking? Especially when you play in a conference that will balance it anyway?
like all other things in college football, it boils down to money at the end of the day, and these big schools that generate big time bucks, aren't willing to give up that much money just so they can boast a better schedule. TN will get an extra home game each year in the new scheduling format by getting an Air Force to come to Knoxville...it's almost like a bouns pay day. why give that up to go play Michigan? Same for Michigan..why agree to a home and home with TN when they can schedule Ball St and sell out 108,000 that weekend instead..same philosophy.
so simply from a dollars and cents standpoint, i don't think you'll ever see these spectactular cross regional matchups consistently. you may get one a year, but with 4 non conf. games in a given year now...one is about all you can expect on a consistent basis.
From a fan stadnpoint, it sucks. From an SOS standpoint it sucks.
and even then, what i do think you will begin to see more of, and it's already happening, you will see more bcs vs. bcs games during the regular season...it just may not be the top teams of those conferences playing each other...rather, top team from BCS league conf. A plays middle of the road/bottom feeder team from BCS league B, maybe in addition to that 1 "marquis" BCS vs. BCS game in the regular season. i think we'll see less and less of the supposed top tier teams in SEC scheduling 1aa schools etc...or bottom feeders from non bcs leagues.
but there will never be a day where non conf. games are going to be like bowl game matchups, not consistently anyway.
