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NIck Saban's thoughts on schedules

tomdalton22

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2011
Messages
24,758
He thinks power 5 teams should only play power 5 OOC games. Of course, he could do that on his own if he wanted to.

Here are his OOC games

FSU - good match-up
Fresno St. - non power 5 that went 1-11 last year
Colorado St - non power 5 that went 7-6
Mercer - FCS school
 
He thinks power 5 teams should only play power 5 OOC games. Of course, he could do that on his own if he wanted to.

Here are his OOC games

FSU - good match-up
Fresno St. - non power 5 that went 1-11 last year
Colorado St - non power 5 that went 7-6
Mercer - FCS school

Don't mind one MAC type game at most but FCS is unacceptable and should never be scheduled. With 3 nonconference games now, in a real world scenario I would like to see each year a big opponent (respectable top team that contends yearly), a middle of the road power 5 school, and a solid mountain west or MAC school (aka not Eastern).
 
With 67 teams in the Power 5 pool, (Saban's suggestion) would entail, IMO, a complete dissolution of the conferences and a realignment with virtually equally distributed "divisions" where they would be "assigned" to play other "divisions" in an alternating rota, ala the NFL.
 
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Alabama has generally not played that weak of a schedule, although they haven't played a true non-conference road game since 2010 (and that was @Duke).

they are the poster boys for being afraid to leave the South. last time they played outside of the south was the Rose Bowl in Jan 2010. I'm counting SEC games in Kentucky as the South for all practical purposes.

last time before that (and their last regular season road game) was... urrrr... @Hawaii at the end of the 2003 season. Which they LOST. They were under a two year bowl ban ('02-'03) at the time, and only agreed to play that game because they viewed it as a "bowl substitute." so... they've gone fourteen years without voluntarily playing a non-conference road game outside the south, and only because of sanctions.

They also vacated their '05, '06, and half of their '07 season.

that's a lot of sanctions!

Southern man knows bad things happen to him when he tries to take his act outside the friendly confines south of the Mason Dixon line... see also: The Battles of Gettysburg & Antietam, and Morgan's Raid.
 
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going back to '90, Alabama left the South a whopping six (6) times, going 2-4 in that span, with those wins being one @ Hawaii in 2002, and a Rose Bowl win against Texas in 2009.

and of those road games, the farthest north they got was Oklahoma.

Southern Man knows well NOT to cross the Mason-Dixon Line!
 
also, Bama won the 1992 national championship, then forfeited all their wins from the 1993 season... so going back to 1990 they've received major sanctions 3 times. They're well overdue for their fourth.
 
going back to '90, Alabama left the South a whopping six (6) times, going 2-4 in that span, with those wins being one @ Hawaii in 2002, and a Rose Bowl win against Texas in 2009.

and of those road games, the farthest north they got was Oklahoma.

Southern Man knows well NOT to cross the Mason-Dixon Line!

Alabama played at PSU in 2011 (and won).

I think with many of the conferences moving to 9 game conference schedules there won't be a need to play more than 1 tough non-conference game. Maybe 1 tougher game, one middle of the road to slightly weaker game (where you win but have to exert yourself a bit), and then one pure cupcake. The SEC has been steadfast at holding at 8 conference games and it will be interesting to see if that starts to affect them in the strength of schedule ratings for the playoff.

I don't think FCS teams should be scheduled at all but do get the economic issues that causes since many of those FCS programs rely on the payouts that those games provide.
 
how did I miss that?

dang. well, they get some credit for that, but their record of leaving the south is still pretty weak.
 
I believe it was though that game would have been early in that season and that scandal broke out in November. If memory serves that was a good, not great PSU team.
 
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