On3 Reporting our 3 Yearly opponents are TN, AU, and MsSt

[tusks_n_raider]

Well, the way the selection committee operates, this is a more favorable series than lsu...

Favorable maybe but Miss St is in no way a rival.

I’ve never in my life heard it propped up as such until there was a choice between them and LSU.

Whether it’s recent history or not the LSU game has been more intense and bitter for the last 15-20 years than 200 years of playing MSU would ever be.

So what if LSU is a tougher game.

Are we Arch Manning standing over a Sam Houston player?

It’s a weak minded argument to prefer to run away from adversity and stomp around on the easy path.

 

[KrAzY3]

Gross.

LSU would be infinitely better than CowbellU

Until college football goes to some sort of college basketball style ranking system (NET) for playoff bids, it makes no sense whatsoever to have an insanely difficult schedule. There is no upside, unless you consider missing the playoffs an upside.

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Favorable maybe but Miss St is in no way a rival.

I’ve never in my life heard it propped up as such until there was a choice between them and LSU.

Whether it’s recent history or not the LSU game has been more intense and bitter for the last 15-20 years than 200 years of playing MSU would ever be.

So what if LSU is a tougher game.

Are we Arch Manning standing over a Sam Houston player?

It’s a weak minded argument to prefer to run away from adversity and stomp around on the easy path.

Define "Rival"...

Fifteen to twenty years does NOT make rivalry.

We are less than 100 miles apart and have played them more than anybody.

The CFP Committee is who has "shaped" the future schedules based on their recent "criteria".

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Define "Rival"...

Fifteen to twenty years does NOT make rivalry.

We are less than 100 miles apart and have played them more than anybody.

Simply put it is relative equals bitterly being competitive to outdo one another to achieve a goal and especially if it’s at the other’s expense.

It has nothing to do with proximity or frequency alone.

We have no beef with Miss St or Vice versa and we never remotely been on equal footing competing for the same goal.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Until college football goes to some sort of college basketball style ranking system (NET) for playoff bids, it makes no sense whatsoever to have an insanely difficult schedule. There is no upside, unless you consider missing the playoffs an upside.

That’s an honest take.

If people just want the easier path they should just say that.

I just can’t get on board with an argument that Miss St is in any way a better or more appropriate rival than LSU.

 

[mikeua69]

Miss State has never been a "rival", but neither has LSU. 57-27 all time, not to mention owning them in Baton Rouge. It only recently became a "notable" game because of Saban imo.

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Simply put it is relative equals bitterly being competitive to outdo one another to achieve a goal and especially if it’s at the other’s expense.

It has nothing to do with proximity or frequency alone.

We have no beef with Miss St or Vice versa and we never remotely been on equal footing competing for the same goal.

Using your definition, we should be playing awbern, tinnerssee and jawja every year...

 

[DzynKingRTR]

I still hate the 3 permanent "rivals". There are a few teams that have none. The SEC tried their best to manufacture a few. Arkie vs lsu comes to mind. USCe vs literally anyone. Seriously who is their rival? Other than ole miss, who is miss state's?

 

[Power Eye]

Define "Rival"...

Fifteen to twenty years does NOT make rivalry.

We are less than 100 miles apart and have played them more than anybody.

The CFP Committee is who has "shaped" the future schedules based on their recent "criteria".

If you're saying that 15-20 years of an intense annual matchup doesn't make a rivalry, then I might not agree with that, but it has been a far more intense game over that period of time than Mississippi State.

But let's not ignore the fact that we've played LSU every year for over 60 straight years. And post-Bryant, the series has been relatively even.

I do agree that it is more favorable for us to play Miss St.

 

[BhamToTexas]

Length of series and geography do matter sometimes. I don't think UT considers Vanderbilt a historical competitive "rival" either.

Most folks on here said it would be LSU because the conference would want to stick it to us.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Using your definition, we should be playing awbern, tinnerssee and jawja every year...

I’d take LSU, UGA, Texas, OU… anybody who we’ve competed against for higher stakes over MSU.

But LSU is the who most fits.

It’s a Square peg sliding frictionless into a square slot.

 

[KrAzY3]

That’s an honest take.

If people just want the easier path they should just say that.

I just can’t get on board with an argument that Miss St is in any way a better or more appropriate rival than LSU.

I have sympathy for the idea of a schedule that's full of nothing but heavy hitters. I get the idea behind it and in isolation I'm sympathetic towards it.

But pragmatically, I'm not even sure computers can properly calculate the true difficulty of a stacked SEC schedule. There's attrition that merely SoS or other calculations can't take into account. For years I used to poke fun at Boise St. and their schedule, referring to it as "Boise Stating" a schedule. It got under their skin enough that a bunch showed up here once in response.

Anyway, the idea was that if you only had to prepare for 1 or 2 competitive games a year and the rest were extremely easy, you could devote almost all your resources to those games, as the rest are not battles but skirmishes.

The inverse is true as well. If you find yourself in a situation where you have for instance 7 or 8 truly tough tests, just the logistics of managing that can become almost insurmountable. In the least there needs to be a FPI style rating system to make sense of that, but even that might not do for some of these 9 game SEC schedules.

Not only that, but pragmatically the SEC standings don't take SoS into account either. Florida for example gets Georgia, yes but also South Carolina and Kentucky. If Alabama was playing Auburn, Tennessee, and LSU every year that's an enormous advantage in the standings for Florida.

So yeah I'm happy with this because it makes the schedule a bit easier that it could have been, but I'm still not happy with the overall situation because a 9 game SEC schedule will be absolutely brutal anyway and there is no system in place as of yet to reward that.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Miss State has never been a "rival", but neither has LSU. 57-27 all time, not to mention owning them in Baton Rouge. It only recently became a "notable" game because of Saban imo.

It wasn’t just notable.

For over a decade the SECW was pretty much annually decided by the Bama/LSU game.

The games have been hotly contested.

If you couldn’t win the West you couldn’t win the SEC and only once did we get around that to compete for a NC (2011)

We were directly in each others path and one had to take the other out to achieve season goals.

If that’s not a rivalry then the English language should be updated.

 

[TideEngineer08]

LSU had become a bigger rival than Miss State over the last 20 years.

But do not discount the overall history of the series with Miss State. There have been a ton of big games in that series and thankfully we have won most of them.

In the end, I don't think it matters. The powers that be have mostly ruined what was great about college football. I wouldn't have missed Tennessee or Auburn anymore than LSU either.

 

[TideEngineer08]

And what's funny to me is when these conversations began several years ago, we were catching grief from others in the conference because we would get to have Tennessee as an annual opponent and we had beaten them 15 years running. In fact, I think that was LSU fans whining back then because they had Florida who was sooo much tougher.

 

[CrimsonBloodn62]

The way I see it now with this 9 game conference schedule is that every other conference that will be eligible for the 12 team playoff came out the winner. While the SEC keeps knocking each other off every weekend, the other conferences will still have their usual cupcake games within their own conference. You tell me which team in the SEC would lose by 50 plus points to another SEC team. It's not going to happen like what just happened in the B1G this past weekend. The SEC is just too strong for that to happen.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

And what's funny to me is when these conversations began several years ago, we were catching grief from others in the conference because we would get to have Tennessee as an annual opponent and we had beaten them 15 years running. In fact, I think that was LSU fans whining back then because they had Florida who was sooo much tougher.

That’s the flaw in people’s argument who advocate for MSU over LSU or any other ‘lesser’ team over a ‘tougher’ team on someone’s schedule.

CFB is cyclical and teams go through ups and downs all the time.

AU has been down a lot lately, Tenn was abysmal until just the last few years under Heupel, and LSU is a touch down from their recent peaks.

It’s not like every single year it’s in stone they will all be 10-2 or better at the same time.

That applies to everyone we play and especially with the chaotic nature of the portal and NIL

There is no way to really predict exactly who will be great year in and year out.

 

[rolltide_21]

I like it. I always enjoyed the series with Miss. St. The Hwy 82 rivalry.

 

[Power Eye]

The way I see it now with this 9 game conference schedule is that every other conference that will be eligible for the 12 team playoff came out the winner. While the SEC keeps knocking each other off every weekend, the other conferences will still have their usual cupcake games within their own conference. You tell me which team in the SEC would lose by 50 plus points to another SEC team. It's not going to happen like what just happened in the B1G this past weekend. The SEC is just too strong for that to happen.

I agree and the SEC is becoming more NFL like. In other words, it's becoming more and more like any SEC team can beat another any given weekend. It's not quite to that level, but it's getting there. To the point that I really think the SEC should rethink it's position of getting 4 autobids in the 12 team playoff. Otherwise, I worry that we will be getting no more than 3 every year due to the cannibalization that will occur within the conference.

 

[mdb-tpet]

There's an inherent benefit to playing a team that does not require a ton of travel and does not fully stress your team every year. Having 2 really good matchups and a close by team every year will pay dividends. Just ask Notre Dame how it's worked for them over the years.