It's time for a reckoning with SEC Cupcake Week

It's happened again, a coach in a power conference with a very weak overall schedule (due to systemic reasons with the design of their conference membership) has taken a dig at the SEC playing a bunch of FCS and G6 teams in the second to last week of the season. This time it was Dan Lanning and Oregon.

The reality is that the 56.5% of the SEC's membership is in the FBS top 25 by all-time winning percentage while 33.3% of the Big Ten is the same. Simply put, you're around a coin flip's chance from playing a program that has a historical tendency to be a contender in the SEC. So, I do not really begrudge an 8-game conference schedule because the SEC's 8 games are a harder schedule than another conference's 9 games. This isn't fan bluster, I'm just looking at the objective numbers. If a conference has more teams that are at the very top of the subdivision with respect to winning percentage then they are the tougher conference. The SEC now houses the perennial superpower program from 3 conferences that existed before the cable television revenue explosion forced this conglomeration across regional lines: Alabama (SEC), Oklahoma (Big 8), and Texas (SWC).

However, none of this really matters in a championship system dependent on human selection instead of metric selection. Cupcake week is an albatross for the SEC's perception and perception is reality. With the 9-game schedule, I suspect this is largely going way but I think this needs to be explicitly eradicated and it will fix some other inequities internal to the SEC scheduling system. The fix is simple in my opinion:

No more OOC games after the 3rd week of the season and no more FCS scheduling

The reason the SEC ends up having a ton of late season open dates is due to several members wanting to play OOC rivalry games in the final week of the season. This needs to end. Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina need to play their OOC rival in week 1 through 3. If it is prescribed by state law, your school's lobbyist better do some work in your state's capitol. Your rivalry games are a problem for this conference and your state problems are your problems to fix.

Since the open dates will not be fillable by the school's discretion, this will end the inequity top programs in the conference face by constantly playing opponents with bye week preparation advantages. Alabama, Georgia, etc do not have a 2-deep of NFL starters anymore due to transfers and NIL. The conference needs to end half of their games being a game where they have a prep disadvantage or they get their prep advantage nullified by their opponent matching bye weeks. It is just self-defeating for a conference to disadvantage their consistent best bets to make a real run at a playoff bid.

The reality is that in the unlimited transfer and NIL era, there is really no difference in playing a lower end G6 team and the FCS. However nobody will poo-poo that if you get it out of the way in September. FCS scheduling has got to go. The idea of it being a form of charity is cute but we can just be charitable to slightly bigger but still screwed school in our subdivision instead.

I know some people are going to be upset but these OOC rivalry games in week 13/14 are a net-negative for the perception of the conference's scheduling. In this committee-based bid selection system, we've got to put the needs of the conference above the needs the petty interests of the individual schools.