Rating the 2011 Non-Conference Slate: SEC

And it is time, finally, for the Southeastern Conference. Fun fact: every SEC team plays a DI-AA team this year.

1. Louisiana State (2 legit, 1 DI-AA): N-Oregon, Northwestern State, @West Virginia, Western Kentucky. Mea culpa: apparently when I wrote the WVU preview I said that game would be in Baton Rouge. Well, it isn't. Flip everything around and what I wrote still applies, I think. As for the Oregon game, go look at the Pac-12 post.
2. Georgia (1.5, 1): N-Boise State, Coastal Carolina, New Mexico State, @Georgia Tech. Man, I really hope Boise wins. That's all I got for this.
3. Alabama (1, 1): Kent State, @Pennsylvania State, North Texas, Georgia Southern. A rare, but highly encouraged, SEC-Big Ten matchup with two traditional powers meeting. Always in favor of that. Also, at least this GSU won't be quite the punching bag the other one was.
4. Arkansas (1, 1): Missouri State, New Mexico, Troy, N-Texas Agricultural and Mechanical. Even though it is part of a now long-running series, I still put Arkansas over Florida because the TAMU game isn't required.
5. Florida (1, 1): Florida Atlantic, Alabama-Birmingham, Furman, Florida State. Unlike the Florida-Florida State game. This is pretty much a bare minimum schedule right here.
6. Auburn (0.75, 1): Utah State, @Clemson, Florida Atlantic, Samford. Again, see the above, re: optional OOC games versus rivalry games.
7. South Carolina (0.75, 1): N-East Carolina, Navy, Citadel, Clemson. East Carolina keeps fooling me. They should just join the Big East already.
8. Mississippi (0.5, 1): Brigham Young, Southern Illinois, @Fresno State, Louisiana Tech. This is almost kind of a real schedule for Ole Miss. BYU and a road game to a west coast school? Almost downright unheard of.
9. Tennessee (0.5, 1): Montana, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Middle Tennessee State. Not much to see here, moving on.
10. Vanderbilt (0.5, 1): Elon, Connecticut, Army, @Wake Forest. Well, even Vandy has to start from somewhere, and at least they've got a schedule that they should at least break even with.
11. Kentucky (0.25, 1): N-Western Kentucky, Central Michigan, Louisville, Jacksonville State. Note that the Louisville game is a rivalry game. Are these guys even trying? Note that the Western Kentucky game is at a neutral site: Nashville. I'm not sure who thought it'd be great for two Kentucky schools to play a game in Tennessee. For a long time I've joked that Memphis is actually the capital of Mississippi - maybe Nashville serves a similar role for their neighbors to the north?
12. Mississippi State (0, 1): @Memphis, Louisiana Tech, @Alabama-Birmingham, Tennessee-Martin. I wonder someone hoodwinked the Bulldogs into thinking Alabama still plays a couple of home games at Legion Field every year and didn't realize they were going to play UAB until the schedule for this year had to be published.

Next up, some final thoughts.