There has been a lot of talk and speculation regarding the Gator’s schedule of late so I decided to set out to dispell some of the myths floating around the internet.

Myth - UF doesn’t have to apologize for its schedule, we play one of the toughest schedules in the country every year.
Truth - I really don’t think it would be appropriate for Western Carolina to apologize for our non-conference schedule but someone should.  The difficult games on UF’s schedule are not those selected by the UF Athletic Department but mandated by our conference alignment and standard schedule rotations of the SEC.  What do you want to bet that if Foley and Meyer were in charge that the Gators would have played Miss State, Arkansas and Ole Miss in the West rather than Auburn, Alabama, and LSU???  The only reason Foley doesn’t have to apologize to Gator fans is because of the inherent hypocrisy of college football.  On one hand we eschew a playoff because of the “tradition” of the game but on the other hand we approach scheduling and budgeting as a big business putting the monetary ‘bottom line’ ahead of the integrity of the sport.  How many great games are not scheduled because coaches are afraid of losing?   “Omigosh *trembling* . . . we can’t play THAT team *lips quivering* . . . we might LOSE!!!  Is there a nearby high school team available instead???”
 
Myth - Because Western Carolina and Vandy were scheduled later in the year they garnered more attention than they should have.
Truth - While there is a degree of truth in this statement, no one has forgotten that Arkansas played a pathetic Out Of Conference (OOC) schedule outside of their season opener against USC despite when the games took place.  And Auburn didn’t overcome their terrible non-conference schedule in 2004 just because they ended the year with wins over Georgia and Alabama.  Had FSU been one of the great teams they were in the late 90s the schedule controversy would have been greatly diminished (just as Ohio State was credited for playing Texas rather than ripped for the rest of their schedule).  Unfortunately FSU is not very good right now. 

 
Myth - Florida needs to play more home games than away games every year to stay in the black financially.
Truth - If this were true then why couldn’t we see a home and away series scheduled alternating with the FSU game.  For example when we played FSU at home we could play Penn State on the road and vice versa.  Yet other than a Miami series scheduled under GREAT pressure from boosters in 2008 and 2013 at a neutral site the other schools added are some of the worse in football (Troy, Appalachian State, Citadel, etc, etc). The fact that we CAN play Miami in those two years debunks the argument that we need 7 home games annually to stay afloat!    

Myth - Other teams do the same thing.  Since we play FSU every year people forget that is our big OOC game.
Truth - Yet for ACC member Miami all UF does is replace Oklahoma on their schedule in 2008 while they are still in the second year of a series with Texas A&M (they play UF and Texas A&M in 08, OU and Tx A&M in 07).  This is where some delusional Gator fans will state that the ACC is a weak conference despite the fact that there are many years when the ACC won the ACC-SEC regular and bowl season matchups.  The bottom line is that while the SEC is (in my opinion) a better league its not that great a difference on average and depending on how your schedule rotation went you could have a much harder ACC schedule than SEC (both ACC and SEC teams rotate schedules with teams from the opposing division).  So unless Miami has the foresight to know when particular ACC teams are going to be good or bad 3 to 5 years in advance in order to plan out the rest of their schedule . . . they must just be scheduling teams they believe are attractive matchups.
 
Myth - UF would schedule better opponents but to do so would cause the UAA to lose money.
Truth - This administration has repeatedly ducked big time OOC matchups using the same excuse - MONEY!!!  Yet annually UF is one of the most profitable in the country, makes more money every successive year and continually finds new ways to spend this extra cash (salary raises for athletic coaches and staffs, extra perks and amenities, projects are began whether needed or not).  The school seems to budget like a newly employed college student, the more they make the more they spend.  Apparently the formula seems to be simple: lesser teams = more wins = higher finish = more money = more pay increases.  As long as a playoff doesn’t exist that could add weight to inter-conference matchups and UF regularly sells out its stadium . . . there is no incentive to reward the fans with better quality games.
 
Myth - UF played the toughest schedule in the nation this year.
Truth - Some people look at the NCAA Strength of Schedule (SOS) calculations and make that claim.  However anyone who actually pays attention to what they read would instantly realize that their formulas are about as irrational as Sagarin’s (who has 9 Pac-10 teams in its top 10 SOS).  The NCAA does nothing more than add up opponents records.  Playing against a 9-3 Louisiana Tech is as difficult as playing against a 9-3 Tennessee in their calculations.  I’m sorry but beating a 6-6 FSU in Tallahassee is tougher than beating an 8-4 Central Michigan or Nevada at home and any formula that doesn’t recognize that is USELESS to base an argument upon.  Western Michigan is NOT superior to South Carolina just because they have one more win!!!
 
Myth - Simply by playing our SEC schedule guarantees we will have a difficult schedule.
Truth - Every conference goes up and down, even the SEC.  Right not the SEC is peaking in quality but the league is still cyclical.  Who can forget some of the down years in the past two decades when a number of mediocre teams went to bowls representing the nation’s best conference?  How difficult was the SEC when Auburn went undefeated?  Or when LSU won their national title?  Not since the mid 90s did the SEC have this kind of quality depth from top to bottom.  In that period three different SEC teams won national titles and would often be .500 or better in the bowl matchups.  Florida, Alabama and Tennessee dominated in large part due to the disparity of the leagues top teams to that of the bottom.  Before the probation scandals in Tuscaloosa those were the only 3 teams that could maintain any kind of consistency.  FSU, which for years was a top ranked team year in and out, is getting progressively worse in the past 5 years and there is no guarantee of righting the ship anytime soon.  When the Mississippi schools rotate back onto our schedule we could look at years where we play more losing teams than .500 or better teams in a given year (UK, Vandy, Ole Miss, MSU, FSU and 3 patsies).  How will our SOS look then?
 
Myth - The top national programs don’t want to play Florida.
Truth - Programs all have preferences in who they want to play but how does OU - Alabama, OSU - Texas, Miami - Texas A&M, USC - Nebraska, Tennessee - Notre Dame, Auburn - WVU, etc, etc, get scheduled if top programs are afraid of competition?  This is another LIE!!!  The truth is that most big time programs don’t want to play at UF WITHOUT A RETURN GAME!!!  Why should a team like Michigan State come to play in Gainesville with all the expense and take home a paltry $500K when they can make 4 times that with a home and home series with someone else???  Florida is unwilling to entertain the idea of playing on the road (and apparently outside the state of Florida too) and also unwilling to shift their schedule around to accommodate other program’s schedules.  Many top matchups are early in the year when Meyer prefers to play two lesser teams before starting the SEC season play with Tennessee.
 
Myth - FSU is normally one of the best teams in the country and they alone make our non-conference schedule difficult.
Truth - I do remember the matchups during the Spurrier years when these teams were consistently ranked in the Top 5 or Top 10.  However its been 6 years since FSU was at that level and if you look at the recent history of the program they are showing themselves to be a more consistent 3 to 5 loss team than 1 or 2 loss team.  If we had a yearly game with South Florida instead of FSU would Gator fans be satisfied in not scheduling any other good matchups?  Technically, in the past few years South Florida has been the better of the two programs.  In fact, FSU was probably the second best non-conference team we played behind Southern Mississippi. 

Myth - SEC teams play too difficult of a conference schedule to risk playing two non-conference BCS schools in the same year, especially in the ultra competitive SEC East.
Truth - Tennessee has NC State and UCLA on their 2008 schedule (not to mention playing both before the UF game).  Georgia who played Georgia Tech and Colorado this year also plays both Georgia Tech and Arizona State in 2008

Myth - The neutral site Florida - Georgia game in Jacksonville counts as a road game in lost revenue.
Truth - The ticket revenue of the game in Jacksonville are split between the two schools after paying the city a 50,000 rental fee for the stadium.  In the current deal Florida takes home about $1 million and Georgia receives $1.5 million (Source - Athens Banner-Herald).  If Florida is truly hurting for money then why would they agree to a contract like that?  In two years UF makes approximately what it would for a home and away series.  The total is slightly lower from lost concessions but hardly a significant amount for a program that runs about a surplus of around $4 million a year.