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Scheduling FCS Teams

+3 HS
deacbfh3's picture
December 10, 2019 at 1:10pm
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For kicks, I looked at the CFP top 10, and checked for FCS opponents among those teams. 

The 3 Big Ten teams in the top 10 combined scheduled 0 FCS opponents.  All of the others in the top 10 scheduled 1 FCS opponent, except for Florida, which somehow managed to schedule 2 of them!

Of the 8 FCS opponents scheduled by the "other 7", 4 of those had losing records, and the 2 that Florida scheduled were 7-5.  So the other 7 didn't only schedule FCS opponents, which is laughable by itself, but also tended to schedule FCS teams that good FCS teams would probably be judged negatively for scheduling.

I think this should be one of the first questions of the committee but, not surprisingly, ESPN was silent on this (for at least the parts of the selection shows that I watched; please correct me if I missed something).

At what point should these teams be penalized for scheduling these types of opponents, and how could this not somehow factor into the strength of schedule discussion, especially when factoring in that the SEC only plays 8 games in conference?

I'm no fan of Penn State by any stretch, but how in the world could the committee place Florida over Penn State?  Not only does Penn State clearly have a better body of work overall, but Florida, in addition to struggling against teams like Miami and Kentucky, played not 1, but 2 FCS opponents?  All Florida has is a home win over Auburn, in a sloppy 8-turnover game, and nothing on the road.  That's it.

Any thoughts on this?  Any ESPN talk that I missed on this topic?

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