Alabama might be the best team in America's best conference; the dirty secret about them, though, is their sleight-of-hand tactics in regards to their scheduling.
Ramzy broke it down thoroughly over here. For a simple point of reference, however, Alabama's 2014 strength of schedule ranks 95th behind such power programs as South Alabama, UMass, East Carolina and Western Kentucky.
In September, Alabama cancelled a home-and-home series with Michigan State scheduled for 2016 and 2017, due to "uncertainty surrounding the SEC schedule." (The SEC of course stayed at eight conference games, shirking the national trend to go to nine.)
Today, the mighty Tide replaced that 2016 Michigan State game with the aforementioned Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.
So much for Saban's belief teams from power conferences should only play teams from other power conferences. It also gives new meaning to Saban willing to "play anybody" in effort to fill the 2015 schedule.
There's a reason he's the new cash king of the sport, y'all.
