2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 14

For a lot of teams, this is the end of their regular slate. For others, there's still the first weekend in December, whether it's for Game 12 or the conference title game. By then, a lot of the playoff teams will be decided, but seedings will still be up in the air.

Yesterday's batch of seedings can be found here, but today I'm focusing on one of the last sets of changes for conference's rankings of their out of conference scheduling. I think we're done with cupcakes so the SEC can come out from under its rock now. You know what, hold that thought.

For last week's rankings, click here.


1. Conference USA (0.00, 7.50; LW: 1). No change.
2. Sun Belt (0.00, 7.25; LW: 2). No change.
3. MAC (0.00, 6.46; LW: 3). No change.
4. Mountain West (0.17, 5.83; LW: 4). Hawaii hosts Army and Nevada hosts BYU.
5. American Athletic (0.00, 5.00; LW: 5). No change.
6. ACC (0.79, 4.36, LW: 7). They got a boost this week with several SEC games. Clemson visits South Carolina, Florida State visits Florida, and Wake Forest visits Vanderbilt, while Georgia Tech hosts Georgia.
7. Big Ten (0.00, 4.25; LW: 6). No change.
8. SEC (0.64, 3.93; LW: 8). After a week of being total pansies and disgracing the regular season of college football, the conference collectively gets its crap together for one week. Georgia visits Georgia Tech, while Florida hosts Florida State, South Carolina hosts Clemson, and Vanderbilt hosts Wake Forest.
9. Pac-12 (0.08, 3.08; LW: 9). Stanford hosts Notre Dame. On a weird note, USC plays its thirteenth game this week, and they aren't playing in the Pac-12 title game. Weird.
10. Big 12 (0.00, 2.80; LW: 10). No change.

If you're going to schedule late season non-conference games, the way the SEC and ACC did it this week are the way to do it. It gives you a late season test, and winning those games can be huge for playoff chances.

Running through scheduling numbers, 101 of the 127 schools that play at the FBS level have played a team from the FCS level this season. Two of them (Old Dominion and Georgia State) played multiple FCS teams, but in their defense, this is their first year at the highest level, so some level of forgiveness can be given. The only conference where a minority of teams scheduled cupcakes was Conference USA, which helps explain their presence at the top of the list.

A representative image of SEC scheduling.

Most conferences had anywhere from 1-3 schools that didn't dirty their hands, but two conferences saw everyone make that mistake: the Sun Belt and... the SEC! The Sun Belt being second despite that is a testament to the fact that they're an 8-team conference, so they play 5 games out of the conference, which spikes their numbers somewhat. But the next time a fan of an SEC school brags about their schedule and how they're so great... point this post out to those sissies. I get that for smaller schools, these games help balance their budgets, and it makes for good experience, but if you're going to play these games, play them the first week of the season, and don't count them in the standings. The sham Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina put on last week is a travesty and the athletic departments and football staff (whoever is in charge of scheduling) should be publicly shamed. For a sport that claims "Every game counts", games should mean something. Playing a school at a lower level towards the end of your season is a copout.