It's a science that became a self fulfilling prophecy. They play 8 conference games and get an extra FCS bye in November while the conferences that play 9 conference games are guaranteed a .500 weekend. You squeeze in 1-2 more bowl eligible teams every year, and the real brilliant part is that they play conference games earlier in the season than others. So you get the inflated Kentucky vs Ole Miss top 25 matchup week 3 and the narrative about how strong the SEC is gets rolling. Regardless of how those teams finish the year, all you hear about is so and so beaing a ranked opponent. They also play the fewest away games per team of any conference, year after year, and it just snowballs. More teams start the season ranked, more games early on against "ranked" opponents, more wins because they play shit ooc and more home games. Rinse repeat.
Shit like this is exactly why we should take the Chip Kelly route and normalize everything. There's no fucking reason one conference averages 4.5 road games a year and another 5.5, or plays a different number of conference games, or refuses to let their programs play FCS opponents while others play 2, etc, etc, etc.
