A sudden war has broken out between SEC fans and Big Ten fans for the past few days in regards to conference scheduling. After Indiana canceled their series against Virginia, Indiana was met with embarrassment until Curt Cignetti jumped in to take a shot at the SEC, saying that they were just trying to adopt an "SEC scheduling philosophy."
Cignetti's words were met with plenty of pushback, including from one of the leading SEC voices, Paul Finebaum. Finebaum said that Cignetti made a "complete fool out of himself," but veteran college sports writer Berry Tramel might have something to say about that.
Tramel, who's known for his work from The Oklahoman, talked about how a quarter of the SEC regular season is "exhibition" and no matter how people feel about the Big Ten and the SEC and their respective schedules, Tramel's rant will definitely draw viewers.
Tramel says 25% of the SEC games are "exhibition games"
To be fair, this type of SEC scheduling has been around for over a decade now, but the thing that Tramel might be missing is that every Power Four school pretty much goes through the same "exhibition" schedule. The only school that doesn't play around with its schedule is Notre Dame, and they play pretty much every conference.
"When 25% of SEC games are games you don't want to watch... I wish that's what we would treat," Tramel said.
No matter how people felt about Indiana, they got exposed on the road in South Bend, where they didn't stand a chance against the Irish. Even though the Hoosiers had a great regular season last year, their strength of schedule was weak compared to other elite teams.
Fans of college football are always going to go back and forth on the strength of scheduling, but now, there's a clear rivalry being developed between SEC and Big Ten fans. Part of Tramel's argument should've been that the last two national champions are from the Big Ten. The SEC competition is still arguably on top of the college football mountain, but now, questions are rising about the authenticity of the SEC scheduling.