On the strength of Alabama and Georgia's schedules

I have a confession: I have bought into the Georgia has played a soft schedule bit. We played a 4-8 MAC team early, a 3-8 Sun Belt team early, our mediocre ACC rival, and an in-state DI-AA team.  Meh. Our rival on Saturday played a 7-5 Sun Belt team, the same 3-8 Sun Belt team we played, a slightly better than mediocre B1.5G team, and an out of state DI-AA team.

As for the SEC schedule, we faced teams from the west with a composite record of 3-13 in the conference. Alabama faced SEC East teams with a 3-13 record in the conference.

Hey, wait just a a damn minute.....

So, Georgia got lucky and beat a Florida team that is every bodies favorite pick to be the team most likely getting screwed by the BCS this year, but Alabama's loss to Texas A&M (which Florida beat early in the season) was the fluke by-product of a guy having a Heisman moment. Yes, Georgia one loss is far worse than Alabama's, but to simply pretend that Florida gave Georgia a win while ignoring Georgia's roll in that win is simply lazy.

I call bullshit. Even Jeff Sagarin thinks Georgia and Alabama are close in the SOS, with Alabama at 39th and the Dawgs at 42nd (FWIW, RealTimeRPI has Georgia significantly higher than Alabama). To hear the pundits tell it, Georgia played a modified C-USA B1.5G schedule and Alabama played in the NFC South. Truth be told, both teams played a nearly even schedule.

That might not make a bit of difference on Saturday, but I was blown away when I started comparing the schedules of the two teams.

TD

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