NCAA Football Report (Week 1)
Week 1 in the NCAA was the time for most of the biggest programs to begin their run towards the playoff.
Like so many years before Week 1 was a mix of games with some of the biggest programs essentially scheduling a preseason game.
There is no preseason for teams in the NCAA and so some of the biggest schools schedule easy opponents to ensure that they can start the year off with a big win.
They will look to smaller programs in order to find teams that are nowhere near the size or talent level.
It is almost a warm-up but there are some major issues with this type of scheduling that so many have a problem with.
The NCAA is in the playoff era where more teams are getting a chance to play for the title and that has increased the intensity of scheduling.
There is a bigger need for a lot of programs to schedule tough games throughout the year leaving them a few dates for those easier games.
Some teams are beholden to a conference schedule and so they take their few free dates and add bigger programs.
It is a way for many teams to get noticed and to become undeniable to take one of those four teams in the playoff.
By making sure they play big names they can make sure they make an impression and unfortunately for so many teams that means doing a lot more than other teams.
There is still a bias among the NCAA voters despite the fact that conference dominance is not as much of a reality as it once was.
During the BCS era, it was undeniable that the SEC was simply a better conference in every way taking almost every National Championship during that time.
Heading into the playoff era, the SEC remained that conference that everyone was watching to produce the best teams every year.
The problem with that is the fact that the SEC consistently gained more respect than any other conference.
SEC teams could simply play their own conference and get the top billing without having any out of conference games that meant anything.
The biggest SEC teams like Alabama would schedule games against some of the smallest programs in Division I and still be ranked #1.
Meanwhile, other teams would beat multiple top ten teams and sit behind the Crimson Tide despite a less than stellar schedule.
That has kept the SEC as the conference to beat but when looking at the bowl records from a year ago they are not the powerhouse they used to be.
The SEC went 4-5 in bowl games a year ago while the ACC went 4-6 and the Big Ten went 7-1 and the Big 2 went 5-2.
The other power five conferences, aside from the Pac-12 who went 1-8, were all comparable to the SEC in their records in the biggest games.
Still, the SEC is a group of teams that tend to get the benefit of the doubt every single year meaning that the Week 1 matchups will remain preseason game level.
The SEC does produce some big programs with a lot of talent as Alabama remains the best program in the country and they are followed closely by Georgia.
The conference is not as deep as it used to be though and to give them that ability to ride on their SEC schedule seems like it isn’t reflecting what is happening in the league.
There may be an adjustment soon or they may never be able to make the adjustment with that belief of conference dominance a hard one to break.
As teams like Alabama get to play games that don’t give them much of a challenge other teams had to get something bigger on the schedule.
Teams are not necessarily playing by the same rules and for some that can make things a lot tougher to get the respect, they need to make the playoff.
They have to schedule tough games and take a much tougher path to the playoff as opposed to some team who get to schedule the easy teams and have a few tough games every year.
That is the way it is right now though and a number of teams passed their biggest test while others failed to make a real impression.
It is not over for any team who lost their first game but those teams playing smaller schools who struggled and possibly lost have a tough hill to climb.
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