The SEC will enforce a new scheduling policy requiring all SEC members to schedule at least one game against a school from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten or Pac-12. The new policy also locks in cross-division games that will be played annually. LSU Athletics Director Joe Alleva has already sounded off against the new policy, and head coach Les Miles is joining him in unison.
“We play the toughest schedule in America in our conference, and then we have the bias of the permanent partner,” Miles told The Advocate on Monday. LSU is paired with Florida in the conference’s locked cross-division match-ups. It is the protected crossover games that was a point of contention for Alleva as well.
LSU has played either Florida or Georgia in crossover games 19 times since 2000. Alabama has played those two SEC East powers just nine times in regular season play over that same span. This is one of the problems with an eight-game conference schedule for a 14-member conference. But Miles took aim at the non-conference scheduling portion of the new policy, one that seems to be of little concern for LSU.
“We’re now also being mandated to take a BCS team,” Miles said. “The bias of the schedule continues to be disproportionate. Fundamentally fair is not something they’ve given great thought to.”
Miles may have forgotten LSU is already scheduled to play at least one school from a BCS AQ conference through 2024, with the exception of 2018 and 2019 for the time being. Those games were scheduled before the SEC put together the new scheduling policy, but it certainly looks as though scheduling non-conference games the way LSU will now be required to do is no problem for Miles and the Tigers. So that seems like an empty punch from Miles.
Take a look at the games LSU has scheduled against teams from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten or Pac-12...
2014: Wisconsin (in Houston, Texas)
2015: at Syracuse
2016: Wisconsin (in Green Bay, Wisconsin)
2017: Syracuse, NC State (maybe)
2020: NC State, Penn State (maybe)
2021: at UCLA
2022: at Arizona State
2023: Arizona State
2024: UCLA
There is a home-and-home agreement with Oklahoma that still needs to find dates that work for both schools. Ideally for LSU, inserting the games in the 2018 and 2019 seasons would seem to be the best fit. Doing so would satisfy the scheduling requirement for the only years in non-conference play not yet scheduled in full. The problem is Oklahoma already has started setting non-conference games for those seasons with two games against UCLA and one against Army already booked.
Helmet sticker to FBScheules.com for the future LSU schedule info.