Fox Sports' Tim Brando Also Thinks Alabama's Schedule Is A Joke

Tim Brando, lol

It's the same every year! Last year while nikki was saying that they didn't have any bad losses like OSU, they also didn't have good wins. Very weak schedules!

This argument is just stupid. Schedule are hard to manage to keep people happy. Every school has a few economic assist gimmes to get some mid season practice/rest to get thru the season. Been happening forever. These pundits are stupod, and pushing for better games for ratings not what's best for the game.

I’m not saying we have the hardest schedule in the country, but it annoys me how so many teams get a pass for playing such a similar schedule to Alabama. Clemson opened their season at home against Furman and plays Georgia Southern soon after. Georgia has UMASS and Middle Tennessee this year. I can sit here all day and Google schedules and talk about how “weak” they are because there are smaller schools on there. And by the way, statements like these seem to operate under the assumption that major FBS programs all win against these smaller programs 100% of the time, but Alabama is getting special recognition for it. Didn’t Troy beat LSU recently? Didn’t Auburn get taken to overtime by Jacksonville State? Penn State was a hair away from losing to App State today. If it’s so “easy” to be so dominate over these teams, then why isn’t every team doing it? Again, not saying Alabama has a terribly hard schedule, but enough of acting like every other team contending for a playoff spot has a loaded schedule of football powerhouses.

Several items of note – TLDR warning up front for those of you who aren’t interesting in riding on the Train of Truth for a couple of minutes. 1. As noted previously, “Bama can’t play itself.” 2. Schedules are set years in advance. Some teams you can expect will be good five or six years from now… others not so much. There is a lot of unpredictable variability here. Take Louisville for this opener – Louisville had a Heisman Trophy QB – who only played three full years. They would be a top 20 team with Jackson still there. Or better. That's not something you could predict several years ago when this game was set. 3. Teams with expensive stadiums MUST – for economic reasons – fill their stadium as much as possible. Any SEC team will have four guaranteed home conference games as part of home-and-away’s – for Alabama, these include teams from the toughest division in college football (SEC West) and additional perm/rotating teams from the SEC East. The philosophy for the remaining four opportunities are to schedule a couple of directional schools for guaranteed cupcake home dates. Then out of the remaining two, one will almost always be a mid-tier team that ought to be a win 90% of the time – they are hungry to move up so they play anybody anywhere, anytime, and are considered road warriors (think Southerm Miss, East Carolina, Boise St, etc.) The remaining game will try to be scheduled with a Power 5 conference team either as a home-and-away or as a “kickoff” game at a neutral site. This formula will get you 7, maybe 8 home games. Which are important to your winning record and also your stadium/local town’s economy. Check out just about any major program… they all follow this formula if they can get away with it – at least every upper tier power 5 team. This year, Alabama has 7 home games. 4. Sometimes, the lower tier games really are determined by the available schedule flexibility of other teams. Say in March, a team drops out of a contracted game to be played that November. It’s rare, but it does happen. It’s hard to get a Notre Dame to fill that empty slot on a one-off basis. The Citadel and Arkansas St are a lot more flexible. And they get paid well for coming here to play. 5. Schedule strength constantly shifts during the season as teams do well or worse. For example, Bama’s schedule SHOULD show up as a bit light until later in the season, where they historically play a 4 out of 5 game stretch with really tough opponents. 6. It’s hard to hit a moving target. But… you can look back and see how it all ended up at the end. I fully understand that Bama usually gets a SoS bump at the end of the year with the playoff games, but then again, those were games that they had to play against similarly tough opponents – and Alabama has gone 6-1 in those extra playoff matchups. Here’s the way Alabama’s Strength of Schedule ended up over the last ten years – the Sagarin ratings are consistent in methodology and are readily available. You can look up a different system if you like, it will turn out close to being the same. Let’s look at the Saban era: Year final Sagarin ranking final strength of schedule ranking 2007 31 30 2008 6 28 2009 1 2 2010 5 14 2011 1 15 2013 3 39 2014 3 2 2015 1 1 2016 2 1 2017 1 27 Alabama teams are always in the top side of the SoS ratings – if not at the very top. I don’t see anything over this time frame that wouldn’t be in the top third or quarter - over the last ten years, the average rating has been 15.9 on the strength of schedule. IMHO that’s actually very strong – there are very few teams who could say they have played tougher overall schedules over the same time decade. 7. Similarly, over that same time frame, the out of conference games has been: Year OOC opponents 2007 W. Carolina, Florida St., Houston, Louisiana Monroe 2008 Clemson (9), Tulane, W. Kentucky, Arkansas St., Utah 2009 Virginia Tech (7), Florida Int., N. Texas, Chattanooga 2010 San Jose St., Penn St (18), Duke, Georgia St. 2011 Kent St., Penn St (23), N. Texas, Ga. Southern 2012 Michigan (8), W. Kentucky, Fla Atlantic, W. Carolina 2013 Virginia Tech, Colorado St., Georgia St., Chattanooga 2014 West Virginia, Fla Atlantic., Southern Miss, W. Carolina 2015 Wisconsin (20), Mid Tenn St., Louisiana Monroe, Charleston Southern 2016 USC (20), W. Kentucky, Kent St., Chattanooga 2017 Florida St (3), Fresno St., Colorado St., Mercer That list includes a power 5 member every year. The bottom line is that most of these guys find the schedule to be a convenient scapegoat – without examining the facts behind the system. I sorta of expect this lazy approach from Brando- he’s NEVER liked Bama. But I’m disappointed in Klatt, he’s normally a better analyst than this. JMHO.

I thought Brando was dead? Oh, fox sports. I guess it's just his career that died.

Alabama’s schedule thinks Tim Brando is a joke.

Mostly away games in the SEC this year. Why doesn’t anybody look at that?

Well at least that don’t have an ex REC member doing the SEC schedule and making sure they play Kentucky and Vanderbilt from the East every year

He still mad about 21-0

Is Brando still a thing? Dude is a clown.

It is a pretty soft schedule, but the it's the same style schedule - in terms of 1 P5 opponent and three warmups - as everyone else. Tim Brando is an LSU Homer, though, and a hack in general. "Fly in the ointment, fly in the ointment!" STFU.

He’s right..

LINK /

Brandeaux never got over 21-0.

Part of Brando's issue, along with everyone else, is that Bama's SEC East opponents are also cream puffs. They play Tennessee and Missouri. So other than the projected top teams in SEC West, they play no one.

I agree with Brando to an extent. It sucks for everyone playing the Citadel...but the untold story is that decent teams are lining up to take an automatic loss

First of all. He's one of those sore LSU fans who hates Bama because of Saban. 2nd, Bama plays a p5 and some cupcakes...just like everybody. Bama has been very vocal about wanting to ratchet up to a 9 game conference schedule but nobody else will. It's gotten almost funny the hypocrisy and the "I'll take a shot at Bama to get my name out there" attitude of folks. If we win because we play an easy schedule it's awfully peculiar that when we play "tough" teams we beat their arse too. Anyway, whatever Bama does is gonna be bitched about just because of who we are. Comes with the territory.

Bama plays the same teams that the rest of the SEC plays. If Bama has an easy schedule so does everyone else.

Did Brando look at other schools too? For example, GA plays Austin Peay, Mid Tenn, UMASS and GA Tech. Auburn plays Washington, but then Alabama St, So Miss, and Liberty. Come on Brando, all teams do it, including us.