Is This the Last Year of SEC Teams Opening with P4 Teams?

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Labor Day weekend used to have big time openers. This year LSU, Ole Miss, and Auburn are the only teams playing teams with a pulse in Week 1.

I know LSU is moving away with it starting next season.

Another consequence of 9 conference games in the expanded playoff era.

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We have Ohio State and Notre Dame as our 2nd games of the season for the next few years; in 2030 we open with Georgia Tech and then play Notre Dame 2 weeks later (no idea if a game in-between will be scheduled or not).

Indiana taught everyone that a strong OOC schedule is worthless. If you're in a P4 conference, just do well in your conference games and get in. They didn't just fail to OPEN with a P4 OOC opponent; they didn't play a P4 team that wasn't in the B1G until the playoffs.

I'm sure someone will try and say I'm claiming Indiana didn't deserve to be there; I am not - I'm just stating that they proved that scheduling strong OOC opponents isn't worth the potential loss or the potential injuries. Play some G5 teams, get your starters out by the 3rd quarter, and bore your fans.

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Could argue that Miami’s win over ND got them in, had that win been against NCA&T or someone, ND may have gotten the nod. So, there is a benefit to playing, but if you do play you better win.

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Fair; it's probably only the SEC and B1G that can do that - the ACC and Big 12 are too weak to rely entirely on their IC schedules unless they go undefeated.

Scheduling a top team in week 2 is completely diff than week 1

Just my thoughts

Lets take it a step further. Looking at only OOC ranked teams vs SEC. And you can’t just look at week 1, you need to look at all 3 OOC games to see who plays vs ranked in the season since OOC games are spread out. Regardless where SEC team is ranked here’s all current OOC teams ranked games.

Week 1:
Ole Miss/Louisville

Week 2:
OU/Michigan
tOSU/Tx
Arky/Utah

Week 13:
Louisville/Kentucky

Thats it, thats all the OOC games where SEC opponent is ranked. Used CBS sports ranks as it lists the games so I could find easy, other services will have different results.

Now of course rankings will change. But as of now thats it.

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Indiana taught everyone that a strong OOC schedule is worthless. If you're in a P4 conference, just do well in your conference games and get in. They didn't just fail to OPEN with a P4 OOC opponent; they didn't play a P4 team that wasn't in the B1G until the playoffs.

I'm sure someone will try and say I'm claiming Indiana didn't deserve to be there; I am not - I'm just stating that they proved that scheduling strong OOC opponents isn't worth the potential loss or the potential injuries. Play some G5 teams, get your starters out by the 3rd quarter, and bore your fans.

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Quality post. Indiana was so much fresher in playoffs. Plus since B10 is top heavy they have a better chance of health due to playing more lesser teams than SEC (not even counting OOC games).

One note, we might see some huge price increases for teams to schedule P4 teams. Knowing they will adjust to easier OOC games.