Posted by ESPN.com's Ted Miller
Washington is the only winless BCS conference team and has become a national punchline. Coach Tyrone Willingham is about as fired as a coach can be while still coaching his team.
But I wonder where the Huskies would be if they started the season playing Eastern Washington -- a rivalry game, right! -- Nevada, SMU and Massachusetts.
Actually I don't wonder.
The Huskies would have started 4-0, just like the team that actually had that schedule, No. 8 Texas Tech.
Instead, the Huskies have played a schedule ranked as the nation's toughest by the Sagarin Ratings. Instead of I-AA foes, they played BYU and Oklahoma and have Notre Dame coming to town Saturday.
Scheduling matters.
And it's become clear that teams are not penalized for scheduling weak opponents in order to pad their record, nor do teams -- or conferences -- get credit for ambitious scheduling.
Texas Tech looks good on paper. The Red Raiders welcomed back 19 starters from a team that finished 9-4 in 2007, including one of the nation's premier pass-catch combinations in Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree.
But the fact is we really have no idea if they are one of the nation's top-10 teams because they have yet to play a team presently sniffing the national rankings. Fair to say their best opponent thus far is 4-3 Nebraska, which extended the homestanding Red Raiders to overtime.
Texas Tech's schedule is ranked 103rd toughest in the nation by the Sagarin Ratings. That terrible slate distracts from No. 6 Oklahoma State, which has played a schedule ranked 87th in the nation.
Six Big 12 teams play schedules ranked 50 or worse. Nebraska's 19th-ranked schedule is the toughest in the conference.
The Pac-10 features schedules ranked 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 13. Only two are ranked 50 or worse.
Two SEC teams have played schedules ranked in the top-20, while six are ranked 50 or worse.
But this isn't to pick on teams that schedule pansies or to question the orthodoxy of Big 12 and SEC dominance.
In fact, I'm waving a white flag over my obsession with nonconference scheduling.
Sure, big nonconference games are the most exciting thing in college football -- think Texas-Ohio State or USC-Ohio State or USC-Auburn -- but making the game fun for fans isn't what this business is about.
It's about one thing: Reducing the risk of losing as much as possible and then hoping a couple of good conference victories will be enough to fool, er, win over poll voters.
Therefore, the Pac-10 needs to stop: 1. scheduling tough nonconference opponents; and, 2. it absolutely shouldn't play nonconference games on the road.
The Pac-10 should adopt the philosophy of many teams presently ranked in the top-25: If you're good, we won't play you because you might beat us. And if you pass the badness test, you've got to come to our house.
(USC should continue to schedule all-comers with the guts to play because no team outside of the Pac-10 can beat USC. Or at least one hasn't in the regular season since September of 2002).
For the other nine teams, it's not worth it.
Arizona figured this out. With a schedule ranked 96th in the nation, the Wildcats are 5-2 and feeling pretty good about themselves. Would Wildcats fans be talking about bowl possibilities, however, if their team had played BYU and Oklahoma instead of Idaho and Toledo?
How many times have you heard or read that USC lost to a "mediocre" Oregon State squad?
If Oregon State, winners of four consecutive bowl games and 19 games the previous two seasons, had played Texas Tech's schedule, the Beavers would be unbeaten, too.
Without changing any players or coaches they'd transform from "mediocre" to a ranked team.
Instead, they played at No. 3 Penn State and at No. 11 Utah and went 0-2 and became mediocre, even though no other team in the nation has played two top-11 foes on the road.
It's not worth it.
So call this an admission of defeat.
The Pac-10 philosophy has been wrong.
No more Georgias or Penn States or TCUs or Oklahomas or Boise States.
Bring on the MAC or Conference USA or the directional schools.
That's how a team -- and a conference -- gains national esteem.
Ted Miller has been covering college football since 1997, starting with Auburn and then heading West to Washington and the Pac-10. His columns for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer won first place in 2007 APSE Best Writing contest. The Atlanta native and University of Richmond graduate presently lives with his wife in Scottsdale, Ariz.
