🏈 SEC and Those Pesky Bye Weeks

[TUSKtimes]

I guess I'm still reeling from watching 4 well-rested SEC teams come off bye weeks to play the Tide in our 2015 season. I'm not trying to turn the discussion into an analytics convention, but it's difficult trying to understand why this keeps happening to Alabama at an alarming rate in the SEC scheduling. Data suggest that a bye week is worth real points and when you watch games like Bama vs Tenn, the eye test suggest more of the same.

Why is it so difficult for the home office to sync up bye weeks with the opponent they happen to be playing that week? They do it with Alabama/LSU and Florida/Georgia. We can almost set our calendars by it.

If the powers that be are smart enough to designate permanent cross-divisional rivals, why aren't they smart enough to designate each SEC team an official, permanent, bye week rival team?

 

[OldPlayer]

It's been worse in the past. I believe that each school can put a request in with the SEC office to "help" with off-week scheduling. It's obvious when most of those schools are requesting.

 

[rolltide66]

I am tired of writing this column: Surely, the SEC can schedule better than this.
Same song, different year... SEC seems to want the power teams to be at a disadvantage???
I am tired of writing this column: Surely, the SEC can schedule better than this.
This year, there are two teams who again feel the brunt of the unequal scheduling (stop me if you've heard these names): Florida and Alabama, arguably the SEC's flagship brands and standard bearers of their respective divisions. Florida faces three SEC opponents coming off of byes. Alabama faces just two, but that is deceptive.


Florida plays Georgia, Missouri, and Arkansas off of byes. Florida, as does Alabama, takes its bye before the season's marquee game, a grudge match in the WLOCP versus Georgia. Alabama, meanwhile, faces LSU and Texas A&M off of byes. Moreover, it faces three other teams that may as well have had a bye, and the Tide play two of those on the road: Ole Miss hosts Wofford, Arkansas hosts Alcorn State, Auburn hosts Alabama A&M. Throw in USC, and again Alabama faces half a slate where opponents have faced zero (or qualitatively zero) competition the week before.


Florida seemingly has a similar or harder road with its three bye opponents. But, the Gators play only one team that has a patsy before meeting McElwain's squad, when the Vols host the Ohio Bobcats.

 

[252BAMA]

I am tired of writing this column: Surely, the SEC can schedule better than this.
Same song, different year... SEC seems to want the power teams to be at a disadvantage???
I am tired of writing this column: Surely, the SEC can schedule better than this.
This year, there are two teams who again feel the brunt of the unequal scheduling (stop me if you've heard these names): Florida and Alabama, arguably the SEC's flagship brands and standard bearers of their respective divisions. Florida faces three SEC opponents coming off of byes. Alabama faces just two, but that is deceptive.


Florida plays Georgia, Missouri, and Arkansas off of byes. Florida, as does Alabama, takes its bye before the season's marquee game, a grudge match in the WLOCP versus Georgia. Alabama, meanwhile, faces LSU and Texas A&M off of byes. Moreover, it faces three other teams that may as well have had a bye, and the Tide play two of those on the road: Ole Miss hosts Wofford, Arkansas hosts Alcorn State, Auburn hosts Alabama A&M. Throw in USC, and again Alabama faces half a slate where opponents have faced zero (or qualitatively zero) competition the week before.


Florida seemingly has a similar or harder road with its three bye opponents. But, the Gators play only one team that has a patsy before meeting McElwain's squad, when the Vols host the Ohio Bobcats.

Comment in the link identifies the root cause of the problem and is not even aware of doing so. Here is the comment:

"I don't know that Georgia and Florida can complain too much
Playing that many consecutive conference opponents is pretty much unavoidable when you insist on having an out of conference rivalry game in the last week, a cupcake in the penultimate week, and don’t want to play a conference game in week one, like UGA and USCe did for a few years.

Kentucky’s in the same situation as Florida with 7 SEC games in eight weeks in a row. South Carolina only avoids it by opening the year with back-to-back conference road games.

Florida and Georgia have nobody to blame but themselves by scheduling OOC games in the first two and last two weeks of the season. The SEC has no other option.

In fact, looking ahead, Georgia’s going to have the same problem next year since they’ve already scheduled three straight OOC games to open the season and have Tech to close it out. If they take their bye before the Georgia Tech game, they’ll play eight straight conference games (and 11 in total) with no byes."


The 4 ( UF, UGA, UK, and SC) East division schools that play EOY OOC in-state rival games and request the last two weeks of the season be left open create a situation whereby there are a greater number of open dates prior to West Division teams than East Division teams. UGA is the perfect example. In a 14 week season, the SEC has but 10 weeks in which to schedule their 8 conference games, and as the poster said, they will have but 9 weeks in 2017 in which to do so. Because of these 4 schools and their schedule requests, the SEC is forced to schedule almost the entire East Division schedules within that 10 week period. As the poster said, 'The SEC has no other option."

So fewer open dates in front of East Division schools means more open dates in front of West Division schools. If you are an AD and most of the 5 open dates that you have been given to schedule 4 OOC games and take a bye fall in front of West Division teams and one of those West Dividion teams is Bama, which one are you going to use for the bye? Case closed! Mystery solved!

 

[pasadena pachyderm]

Hell we had six one year recently coming off byes

 

[TUSKtimes]

Hell we had six one year recently coming off byes

In 2010 and we remember how that season went. Of course, that was also the year we screamed bloody murder to the league office and supposedly got some relief. Bama again having 4 SEC games is clear evidence that the home office is still struggling with the math.

Bama doesn't just lead the SEC in the number of teams coming off of bye weeks, while they are not, we are smoking every other college football team in the nation.
2007-2015
LINK

Bama - 28 times, the next SEC team to us in this same time span is Georgia and Tenn at 11 bye weeks. TAMU at 11 ( mostly Big 12) Then Ole Miss at 9, the barn and Florida at 8, Arkansas, Vandy and LSU at 7.

If you do the math, we are getting the shaft.

 

[252BAMA]

In 2010 and we remember how that season went. Of course, that was also the year we screamed bloody murder to the league office and supposedly got some relief. Bama again having 4 SEC games is clear evidence that the home office is still struggling with the math.

Bama doesn't just lead the SEC in the number of teams coming off of bye weeks, while they are not, we are smoking every other college football team in the nation.
2007-2015
LINK

Bama - 28 times, the next SEC team to us in this same time span is Georgia and Tenn at 11 bye weeks. TAMU at 11 ( mostly Big 12) Then Ole Miss at 9, the barn and Florida at 8, Arkansas, Vandy and LSU at 7.

If you do the math, we are getting the shaft.

Where do you get 4? Only LSU, ut, and aTm had byes prior to their game with Bama in 2015. Since 2010 the maximum is 3 and no school has had more than that since then. In fact, one year the barn was required to reschedule because their bye would have been the fourth.

http://cdn.fbschedules.com/helmets/2015-sec-helmet-schedule.pdf

 

[TUSKtimes]

Where do you get 4? Only LSU, ut, and aTm had byes prior to their game with Bama in 2015. Since 2010 the maximum is 3 and no school has had more than that since then. In fact, one year the barn was required to reschedule because their bye would have been the fourth.

http://cdn.fbschedules.com/helmets/2015-sec-helmet-schedule.pdf

You're right. Miss St slipped Missouri in on a Thursday after their bye week. Giving them a few days little less time to rest their two weeks and a few more days to prepare for Alabama. Frankly, if you're going to play a Thursday game that's the way to go. Would be interesting to know if Mullen's would have scheduled Missouri that way without the Bye? Either way, the Miss St. bye week gave them options they didn't have with Bama.

 

[252BAMA]

You're right. Miss St slipped Missouri in on a Thursday after their bye week. Giving them a few days little less time to rest their two weeks and a few more days to prepare for Alabama. Frankly, if you're going to play a Thursday game that's the way to go. Would be interesting to know if Mullen's would have scheduled Missouri that way without the Bye? Either way, the Miss St. bye week gave them options they didn't have with Bama.

All of the conference games, including the Thursday night games, are scheduled by the SEC office. I suppose they have a list of those schools that are receptive to playing on Thursday night. Needless to say, Bama is not on that list. I suppose most of them that have been scheduled in the week prior to playing Bama would be OK with playing on Thursday night.

Note that all 4 schools that were scheduled to play on Thursday night in 2015 were given an open date prior to that week, including the visiting schools. All 4 took a bye on that week.

 

[TUSKtimes]

All of the conference games, including the Thursday night games, are scheduled by the SEC office. I suppose they have a list of those schools that are receptive to playing on Thursday night. Needless to say, Bama is not on that list. I suppose most of them that have been scheduled in the week prior to playing Bama would be OK with playing on Thursday night.

Note that all schools that were scheduled to play on Thursday night in 2015 were given an open date prior to that week, including the visiting schools. All took a bye on that week.

Tennessee just moved their first game to Thursday night against Appy St. Makes the same sense in that VaTech follows at Bristol.