The BCS Formula: cupcakes and home fields

College football schedules, at least for the BCS big boys, have been put on auto-pilot. Schedule-makers might as well be blindfolded. One button to push. No app required.

-- Get seven or eight home games;

-- Play one non-conference game against a team from another BCS league (if you must);

-- Schedule three or four patsies;

-- Try not to leave the state, if you can help it.

It is a formula for winning a national championship and, perhaps, boring to your fans. Your team stays healthy with a teetotaler schedule and is not emotionally drained. Revenue piles up.

One advantage to playing a decidedly weaker opponent is that players do not have an Armageddon every week and might actually be able to concentrate more on studies. But then again, what comfort is that to the fan who paid $65 a ticket to see a game that is usually decided before kickoff?

Furthermore, the system makes it harder to settle the debate about a true national champion when there is no playoff. If the top teams from the top conferences avoid each other in the regular season, can you get a feel for which conference is best with the bowls?

You know how many games this season pitted non-conference opponents in the Top 20? Three.

Boise State does not play an SEC schedule, not even close. But the Broncos should not feel so ashamed when the Big Ten had one Saturday (Sept. 25) where 10 of its teams played non-conference home games against teams from outside the six major conferences.

“It’s further proof that the BCS’ defenders claim that every game counts is bogus,” said Brian Frederick, the executive director of the Sports Fans Coalition, which is based in Washington, D.C. “Every game doesn’t count.

“There was a stat from Sporting News last year that said 23 percent of the games SEC teams played were against I-AA opponents and that Big Ten teams played 21 percent of their games against I-AA schools. There is clearly a way to maximize your chances to make it to the BCS title game and that’s to play a bunch of cupcakes.”

The University of Georgia tried to be more ambitious than most programs by scheduling three non-conference BCS opponents in one season; in 2009 the Bulldogs played Oklahoma State, Arizona State and Georgia Tech. Georgia actually crossed the Mississippi River; when UGA played at Arizona State in 2008, it marked the first time since 1967 the team had crossed Mississippi for a regular season non-conference game.

But that ideal has circled the drain and disappeared.

The Bulldogs dropped Oregon from its future schedule and one of the reasons, according to athletic director Greg McGarity, was the formula for winning a national championship demanded less stress on the team.

“You have to do what is the best scenario to get you to Atlanta [for the SEC Championship game],” McGarity said when the announcement was made that Georgia was dropping Oregon. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, if you go undefeated in the SEC and win in Atlanta and beat Georgia Tech, you’re going to be playing in the national championship game. You have to be careful in scheduling the other three games because you must be at your best for the SEC games.”

The Bulldogs also play one and sometimes two fewer home games than most BCS schools because the Florida game is always in Jacksonville. Georgia needs to add a non-conference school for a seventh home game, which is standard for BCS schools. The university ultimately benefits; the UGA athletic department has given $2 million back to the university the last several years.

Once upon a time, the University of Miami and Florida State had a philosophy that said, “anybody, anytime” when it came to scheduling.

These days, college football programs will play anybody, as long as it is not a BCS school, anytime on its home field.

The SEC, which labels itself as the kingpin of college football, typically has one of the weakest non-conference schedules of the six BCS leagues, according to independent BCS analyst Jerry Palm.

Anybody looked lately when Florida last left the Sunshine State to play a non-conference regular season opponent? Syracuse, 1991.

Tennessee decided to turn and run from a series with North Carolina, an embarrassment for the Vols’ program.

Mississippi State is 7-3, but there is not one non-conference BCS team on its schedule.

“The SEC routinely plays the worst non-conference schedule and the ACC can be pretty bad, too,” Palm said. “You’ve got schools, too, that don’t have to leave their own state to play their non-conference BCS team.

“SEC schools don’t go anywhere. They are the biggest and baddest, but they are not interested in proving it except in January at the national championship game.”

The Big Ten is also notorious for easy games. Michigan State, which was counted among the national elite for two months while it was unbeaten, had a schedule that included teams with these 2009 records: Western Michigan (5-7), Florida Atlantic (5-7), Notre Dame (6-6), Northern Colorado (3-8).

Frederick said a solution to watered-down schedules would be a playoff. The sanctity of the regular season and its non-stop roulette of tough games is a myth, he said, and a playoff could fix it.

“Schools could take some risks in the regular season outside their conference if there were a 16-game playoff schedule,” he said. “They could lose two or three games against strong non-conference teams, but win the conference championship and get an automatic playoff berth.”

Palm doesn’t think so.

“I doubt a playoff system will improve regular season scheduling. There will still be a lot of punching bags on the schedule,” he said. “Just look at basketball. There is a lot of home cooking with the big schools.”

SEC teams want to control their schedule with the seven and eight home games so they continue to generate the money to continue the expansion of their football programs. It is a competitive conference and schools are always seem to be adding to weight rooms or renovating areas where recruits are hosted.

When teams do play a national non-conference opponent, they are starting to move the game away from campus. Michigan and Alabama will play in Dallas' new Cowboys Stadium in 2012. The idea is to crash another recruiting market while still getting some gate revenue.

Alabama has played Virginia Tech and Clemson in Atlanta to start the season. LSU opened the 2010 season with North Carolina in the Georgia Dome.

There are some solid reasons for not scheduling tougher games. The week-long intensity of an Alabama vs. Auburn game or a Georgia vs. Florida cannot possibly help players in the classroom. Coaching intensity the week of the big game is revved up and passed down to players. Students around campus will not let players forget about next Saturday either.

“We have Oregon and West Virginia [in 2011] and you put that with an SEC schedule and that’s as much as anybody needs,” said LSU coach Les Miles. “You have to bite off as much as you can chew and see if you can chew it. When you know you are going to play the finest competition that there is on the back end of your schedule, you want to make sure you can get there with the people that can help you.

“I don’t know that the recipe is to load it up on the front end.”

Frederick, speaking for the fan who walks into the game knowing a blowout is imminent, said the current scheduling has divided fans.