Yeah, you know what we came to do:
Doug: If they only have to get to six wins to be bowl-eligible, and can now count wins over D-IAA teams with virtually no strings attached, why would a middle-of-the-pack major-conference team schedule anything more than the bare minimum in terms of difficulty? If you think the best you can do in-conference is 3-5, hook up with at least three layup opponents in out-of-conference play and bickety-bam, you got yourself a bowl invite.Posted by Nastinchka at June 19, 2009 01:01 PMDoc: Middle-of-the-pack teams are one thing, but there certainly aren't as many national-interest games as there used to be. It's not like big games are going extinct -- Alabama's still playing Penn State next year, too. You can rack up some of those numbers to the disappearance of independents and a couple big non-con games (Oklahoma-Texas, Miami-Florida State) becoming conference games. But definitely it seems like the elite programs are moving gradually to schedules that have one other elite team and three soft, delicious cupcakes instead of a respectable middle-tier opponent.