Um, what? Any time you are forced to cite a known and proven imbecile like Peter Burns to reinforce your position, it should alarm you that you are in the wrong position. An 8 game conference schedule in a 16 team league is a joke. It's basically indefensible without having to advocate for wanting a soft schedule.
The FCS opponent stuffing in the SEC is also an embarrassment. Drop those games and UTEP for Texas and add 8 more conference slates and the sport is overall better off and the SEC will still get 4+ into a 16 game conference every year.
Also, a number of these SEC teams have no business being ranked.
-SCar has a great player on each side of the ball but lost a ton of talented experience. All of the sudden Shane Beamer's program just reloads? That's laughable. They return one starter from their defensive front 7, which was the team strength. He's great, but he's one guy. They also replace a high draft pick in the secondary and at LB.
-ATM hasn't finished a season ranked in 5 years. They've only finished ranked twice in the last 11 seasons, and they've opened ranked in 9 of those years. They define overrated and their roster for this year says that continues.
-Oklahoma is in the same boat as ATM. "But they had a lot of roster change! They brought in a hot shot QB!" They had the worst OL statistically in FBS last year "but all those guys return!" Right.
-Tennessee has no business being ranked with their losses. They don't have an answer for the loss of Sampson, the conference's leading rusher and a key to their 2024 success in an offense predicated on rushing success. They also will be starting the former QB from ... App State.
-Florida will finish the season unranked. Lagway is made of glass and they're living off closing last year with 4 wins including against 2-10 FSU and unranked Tulane who had lost their QB and TB to the portal before the bowl game.
-Ole Miss has that one QB who had that one drive against Georgia last year. They lost a ton.
See FSU if you think a constant portal rotation of 20+ entries and exits can't kill you. That's what's churned in and out again at Ole Miss, LSU, and OU. That's not tenable and at least one of those teams is going to be punished for missing on evaluations and having a mercenary culture, maybe several. The formidable opponents in this conference this year are Texas, Georgia, and Bama. Everybody else you can drop in a bag, shake it up, and pull out a name and it will look the same or worse than the other 13 teams. Same as the Big 10.