They scheduled Utah and Utah backed out... they scheduled the 2 games with Ohio State. Ole Miss, as stated, is scheduled for the future. And last year, even without a difficult nonconference opponent, UT played one of the most difficult 4 game stretches in college FB history, with 4 consecutive opponents in the top 11 and 3 of those top 7, winning the first 3. Even with their nonconference, they played a tougher rated schedule than USC and Alabama. Nobody in the Big XII or the SEC, the two power conferences, is going to schedule a difficult nonconference schedule on an annual basis. Not when they have so many difficult conference games to contend with. The weaker conference champs need those type of games to bring up the SOS -- UT's schedule strength is going to be fine, overall. You absolutely take that into account when you're putting together a schedule.
bigtexxx is actually 100% correct for once, on a topic pertaining to UT football. LSU is the one OOC team I would not want to play regularly. Not because I mind the losses sometimes... but because the recruiting angle is actually a very important one.
I can't find anything on utah backing out of playing texas I have heard this before but I would like to see it documented. I've also heard that Mack felt scheduling Ohio State wasn't worth it and you won't see anything that ambitious again, but I can't find anything on that either.
Wrong. OU's OOC schedule has consistently been better than UT's in the past several years. Also, Florida schedules either Florida St and/or Miami almost every single year.
Also if you didn't notice yesterday, Alabama played Virginia Tech (#7 in the country). And Georgia played Okie St. I'm sure I can find many more examples in recent years, that's just off the top of my head in 1 minute's worth of thinking.
Can anyone name a team that deserved to be in a title game but missed out because they played a difficult non-conf team and lost? I can name at least two teams in the B12/SEC that missed out on national title games because of terrible OOC schedules - Texas last year and Auburn in the 3-undefeateds season. And several that made it, in part, because of difficult OOCs - Oklahoma last year, LSU in the 2-loss year, Oklahoma in 2003, etc.
You're wrong about OU. OU played TCU in 2008, nobody ranked in 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, or 2002 (looking at the ESPN schedules, which go back that far). They did play Alabama in 2003, back when Alabama was terrible. There's no way that puts their schedule ahead of UT, who played TCU in 2007 and Ohio State in 2006 and 2005. I'll give you Florida, who plays their in-state rival FSU every season and Miami with some regularity. And those are pretty good out of conference games, although neither school has been a big time program in the last 5 years, longer for FSU.
Of course. Every season there are some good out of conference matchups. But I said that you won't find a Big XII / SEC team who schedules that type of game every year (other than Florida against FSU) . Georgia doesn't do that every year, neither does Alabama or Ok State. The best out of conference matchup in 2005 and 2006 was Ohio State - Texas, both years.
They also played a team that went to a BCS bowl (Cincinnati went to the Orange Bowl), and a Pac-10 team on the road. Not that Cincinnati was a great team, and Washington wasn't good, but they at least schedule BCS conference teams. Thats a lot different than Wyoming, Central Florida, and UTEP.
While technically the Big East winner goes to a BCS bowl, that's an ongoing travesty. It's a terrible football conference, especially lately. And Washington wasn't "not good", they might have been the worst team in the country, going a perfect 0 - 12. They also scheduled 1-AA Chattanooga. While there's nothing special about UTEP or Florida Atlantic, Texas did play Rice (10 - 3) and Arkansas (SEC school) last year. I'd argue that's enough to balance a mediocre Cincinnati and an absolutely terrible Washington.
I have no idea where you get your info from. As Beck said, Cincinnati won their conference last year and was ranked #17. Here are the notable OOC games OU has played the last several years: 2009 - BYU; Miami 2008 - Cincinnati; Washington (yeah they sucked, but still a BCS school); TCU 2007 - Miami 2006 - Washington; Oregon 2005 - TCU; UCLA 2004 - Oregon 2003 - Alabama; UCLA 2002 - Alabama BTW, OU won both of the Alabama games so you really are looking at some bad info or something. (you said they lost in your initial post) In any case, even everyone on Orangebloods (probably the most rabid homeristic UT fans) all agree that OU schedules better OOC games in general. It's not debatable.
Oklahoma played North Texas, a 4 - 9 Alabama, Fresno State, and a 6 - 7 UCLA that year. I'd dispute that being some sort of impressive nonconference schedule. USC got hosed because they finished 11-1 in the regular season with a loss to unranked Cal and only 1 win against a ranked opponent. Oklahoma's loss was to a (then) top-10 team in K-State and they were 12-1 with 2 very impressive conference victories against ranked UT and Ok State. To say that it had to do with nonconference schedule is wholly incorrect.
Dude, Alabama and UCLA are still teams from *major* BCS power conferences... it doesn't matter if they happened to suck that year. Why can't we (UT) schedule a OOC BCS team every single year, even if they're the mediocre ones?
Who knows about the 2009 teams, so let's look back at the previous years. 2008 - I've covered. 2007 - Miami sucked, 5 - 7. 2006 - Washington sucked, 5 - 7. Oregon was 7 - 6. 2005 - TCU was good, and beat OU. UCLA was good, also beat OU. 2004 - Oregon sucked, 5 - 6. 2003 - Alabama sucked, 4 - 9. UCLA sucked, 6 - 7. 2002 - a good Alabama team, win. So we're looking at TCU and Cincinnati as good wins last year. Neither is a major conference team, but for the sake of argument let's give them schedule props. Otherwise, we're going back to 2005 for a good nonconference game for OU, and they lost both of those. Then, all the way back to 2002.
I don't care who won or lost the games. I'm strictly talking scheduling, which is fully controllable. Again, my question: "Why can't we (UT) schedule a OOC BCS team every single year, even if they're the mediocre ones?"
I think you're missing the point in that these teams are all a hell of a lot better competition on the whole than the Bum F*** Egypt directional schools that most BCS teams play in weeks 1-4
If you're going to give credit for scheduling teams from "major BCS power conferences", then how do you give such credit for scheduling teams like Cincinnati and TCU, who play in weaker conferences but happened to be good last year? And UT does play teams from BCS conferences... Arkansas is SEC, right? They played Arkansas in 2008, Ohio State in 05 / 06, Arkansas in 04 and 03, UNC in 02. Not a huge number of those games, but that's 6 of the last 8 years.
You may not like Cincinnati, but the unbiased computer rankings put Cinci at #12 and TCU at #10 last season. Texas had nothing remotely close to either of those. Yes, Washington sucked. But you have to schedule these games out pretty far in advance. If you schedule 3 BCS/MWC (which is getting to be just as good) conference opponents, you're much more likely to hit than if you schedule 1.
