Playing in the SEC has clearly kept our member schools from winning championships. I mean, just compare the number of championships won by SEC member schools versus championships won by the Big 10 over the past 20 years. (Hint: Without Michigan State your conference would have a big goose egg. SEC: SIX! )
WHOOPS! Another fail by Assembly Hall.
Conference smack is about all the poor hoosiers have left, and them trying even that makes them look stupid if you look at actual results.
UK has won as many championships since 1996 as the ENTIRE Big Ten has won since 1987!
LOL......it wasnt conference smack. If I thought my team was gonna be in a less than steller conference, I would want to play good teams ooc. We arent talking the past here, we are looking into the future. Now conversely If I thought I had a good team, but yet was going to get stiff competition from within the conference I would be more apt to have an easier ooc schedule.
I never intended my comments to be a recent history lesson on how the SEC stacked up against the BIG according to championships in the last 25 years. BTW, how would the numbers be if it was FF appearances?
You must admit there's a difference between playing Chattanooga and Belmont. Between Radford and Davidson. Between Penn and Samford. Between Penn State and and Colorado State. Of course, fans of "top tier" programs look at schools like those as automatic wins, but there's a considerable difference.
In the past 3 years, Duke has played 25 nonconference opponents in the top 100 RPI. Kentucky -- 15. Narrow it to the top 50, it's Duke 15, Kentucky 10.
That's how it works.
When all is said and done more is said than done.
There's definitely an art and science to picking the top teams from crap conferences and the middling teams from power conferences.
Everyone is going to play a some teams from the MAC or MEAC or MAAC et al, but if you play the top team it looks much better and you should still easily be able to defeat them.
Also if you play a crap team from a good conference, even if there record turns out to not be as good, they'll still keep a high RPI due to the tough schedule.
That said, kudos to UK on the scheduling. Those are interesting and watchable new matchups.
I was a fan of the IU-UK rivalry (I also attended all of the "Big 4 Classic" games a gazillion years ago), but they seem to have done a good job of filling that void for now.
When all is said and done more is said than done.
I think the biggest fear was that the schedule would be boring. Since this announcement, every UK fan I have seen speak/type on the issue is very happy with how the schedule is now looking.
It's nice for the program to be in such competent hands after BCG/Flubster.
I'm also a huge fan of how Cal is enforcing a strict 2 year limit on our scheduling decisions. No more 8 year contracts with Lil Brother, even though Cal said he does not envision that game changing anytime soon. Locking your program into such long commitments when there's no advantage to doing so is just dumb.
BTW WMR I looked up FF appearances for the SEC and Big Ten since 1987. The SEC has 13 amongst 3 schools.....UK, Florida, and Arkansas. The Big Ten has 18 amongst 7 schools...Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
And I've seen so many play the "Vacated" card on Calipari that I may as well play it here...Minneosta and Michigan each had a Final Four vacated, did they not?
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