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It's who you play, but also when and where you play - by ndhouston

For example, USC never plays FCS teams. USC also plays its major rivals back-to-back every other year. In the off-years they interrupt their conference schedule to fly across 3 timezones and play @ND. USC travels much farther for most of their games than Alabama does, and they play a balanced schedule regarding home and away.

Even before the era of early-season exhibition games, Carroll's USC would schedule early season true road games, like @Auburn, or Virginia, or Nebraska, or Ohio State. The year after winning @Auburn, USC again opened with Auburn, this time at home, and then played 2 ranked teams on the road before their conference schedule. No one can accuse USC of not scheduling aggressively.

In the Carroll era the Pac-10 typically had 3 ranked teams at the end of the year. The SEC normally had 4 teams ranked in the final polls of that era, but the SEC also had two more teams playing. USC never finished lower than 4th in the national polls from 2002 through 2008.