You totally missed the point. I was talking about the inherent system assuming all else equal. That’s nothing inherent about WSU being a bad team at the moment.</p>
<p>But if you try to imply that WSU/Washington are gimmes all the time, perhaps you should look at the track record of your team, Maryland, and few other teams from ACC. Don’t tell me teams like Maryland/Virginia/Duke are better than WSU/Washington in the last 2 decades. Since 2000, WSU went to bowl games three times and won two of them against Texas and Purdue. When was the last time Duke went to the bowl? When was the last time Maryland/Virginia beat someone as good as Texas?</p>
<p>I guess you didn’t watch Washington/LSU game just couple weeks ago. Washington dominated the yardage and played a competitive game against LSU for the entire game. When was the last time those bottom teams from ACC played a competitive game against a good SEC team, or any SEC team for that matter? But wait, ACC bottoms like to schedule tons of games against opponents from the lower division. So I guess they really don’t get as many chances to play SEC teams anyway.</p>
<p>Yet, they still appear to have all sorts of trouble even against those teams from the lower division. UVA lost to William&Mary and Maryland needed OT to beat James Madison (didn’t know they have a football team). Duke lost to who? Richmond (I didn’t even know there’s such school). These opponents are all from the “Championship Subdivision”!!! At least Washington routed Idaho last week, a team from the WAC, a quasi-major conference; at least WSU lost to tougher teams and has played against teams from BOWL Subdivision only.</p>
<p>Please read carefully. I assume nothing about <em>ALL</em> FCS. In GENERAL, FCS is nobody compared to the division above, especially the major conferences and quasi-majors such as mountain west and WAC. Washington lost every single game last year. So what? One year establishes a trend? Please look at whom they played also. They had the toughest schedule in the nation. Vandy?..you got to be kidding me.</p>
<p>Frankly playing FCS teams is ridiculous and national championship contender teams should be given a hard time for scheduling them.</p>
<p>FCS teams are given less scholarships, less resources than FBS teams. It’s not a fair contest from the start. It’s like playing a game of monopoly where one player gets to start with more money.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Washington is going to win way more this year than last year. They gave LSU all they could and LSU is supposed to be the #3 SEC team.</p>
<p>They went winless last year only because of hard schedule, key injuries, and eventually they just gave up on the coach since they knew he was going to be fired.</p>
<p>Plus, Colorado is shaping up to give the Big-12 a pretty decent gimme game itself.</p>
<p>There’s another way to look at it. Suppose you got the 2nd worst team in a major conference and it just lost to the worst team in its own conference. It still looks a lot better than losing to just about any team from FCS. I think that’s fair and that’s why Pac10 teams are inherently at a disadvantage. By the way, for those that say WashU/WSU are gimmes, even if that were true (yet WashU gave LSU all it could handle this year and barely lost to BYU (10-2) largely on a questionable “excessive celebration” call last year), it just means WashU/WSU automatically got 9 losses from its own conference instead of 8 for the gimmes in other major conferences. So that disadvantage still applies. We are evaluating the <em>whole</em> conference, from top to bottom.</p>
<p>Maybe I didn’t get the mathematical concept behind it, but it looks to me like you’re not aware that WashU does not play Division I football. The University of Washington=UW, not WashU.</p>
<p>Okay I stand corrected then. Thanks. Old habit tells me to write WashU on CC.</p>
<p>The math behind is that after 8 conference games for all teams, teams in other major conference can potentially get W in their 9-th game against OOC team and historic data show that most teams in major conferences do win their OOC games more often than they lose year in and year out, especially if they play some cupcakes. So the net is positive for all the major conferences as far as W/L record goes. Those wins come at the expense of non-major conferences. But when it comes to Pac10 teams, that ninth game against conference foes means half the teams in the league will automatically have one more loss. The net is zero; that extra conference game is a zero-sum game for the conference as a whole.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, Maryland is definitely better than at least half of the pac-10 teams in the last … however many years you want to go back to from 1 to 100. If you take the last 9,10 years, Maryland went to bowls at least 6 times and won 4 of those (better than both washington and washington state combined). Maryland won the ACC once in the last 10 years. When was the last time Washington or Washington State (or anyone else beside USC) won the pac-10? At one point last year, maryland was the only team that beat 4 ranked team in the country (before the conference championship games). How do you even compare that to washington & washington state?</p>
<p>I agree Duke & UVA suck but they do have some good and bad years. However, not everyone play them twice in the ACC so you don’t get the automatic 2 wins year in year out.</p>
<p>That also means half of the teams in the conference get a win, so the net is 0. Other conferences doesn’t necessary get a positive because they will be beating each other up too. Cupcakes teams in FBS will lose and get a negative for out of conference records too. Unless 110 other FBS teams schedule 110 games against division 1AA and win all 110 games and the pac-10 teams don’t, then the pac-10 is at a disadvantage. pac-10 is not the only conference with that schedule format.</p>
<p>If anything, it gives the top 2 teams the advantage of not having to play the championship game. So the top 2 teams in the pac-10 will only meet once whereas in other conferences, there is a huge chance the top 2 teams will meet twice because of the championship game.</p>
<p>Gators have only proven this season that they can whoop two non-BCS conference teams on their own turf.</p>
<p>I’m looking forward to the Gator/Volunteer smackdown this weekend…the Gators want to make Lane Kiffin eat crow. It would be hilarious if Tennessee wins.</p>
<p>Washington won the Pac-10 (and Rose Bowl) in 2000 and 4 other times in the 90’s. Washington State won the Pac-10 in 2002 (though they lost the Rose Bowl) and 1997. Arizona State won a Pac-10 Championship in 2007.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It would be even funnier if Florida dropped 70 on them.</p>