1. Miss State and Ole Miss are both improved. Maybe Miss State is not really an SEC contender, but the last three Auburn victories against them (coincidentally all when Malzahn was a coach at Auburn) were decided in 7 points or less. Auburn's two best teams since 2005 were pushed to the brink and in 2010 an argument could easily be made that we should have lost that one. If the wide open Miss State receiver catches the ball running down the sideline, we most likely do not win the national championship that year.
Ole Miss has upped its recruiting over the past two years and will have NFL-caliber players contributing at many positions. They have a seasoned quarterback in Bo Wallace and a hot coach in Hugh Freeze.
Further, both games will be played away. Over the last 20 years, the Mississippi schools are typically easy wins. 20+ points. Nothing to worry about and a complete embarrassment if we lose. This year is a very rare year that both schools seem to have put together good teams and we have to visit them.
2. AT Kansas State. What the hell is a program like Auburn playing AT Kansas State the third week of the season on a Thursday night? It's prime time opportunity for an upset. We should at most play a Big 9 school at a neutral site in week one.
Much like the Mississippi schools, this should be an easy OOC victory. It just so happens that we get Kansas State with Bill Snyder as the coach, we get them at their stadium, and we play them on a Thursday night.
3. South Carolina and Georgia from the East. We didn't land Florida when they just so happen to be sucking like Alabama did. We got the two favorites to win the East. One of them we play at their stadium. Both games will be incredibly difficult though we did luck out having a bye week before USCe.
4. The stretch: LSU, @Miss State, South Carolina, @Ole Miss, Texas A&M, @Georgia. It's not so much the quality of teams we will be playing (all should field competitive football teams) but rather the inconsistency in alternating between being at home and away.
Last season, we had a stretch of home, away, home, away, away, home and it worked out well; that might have been because Western Carolina and Florida Atlantic were two of those games and Arkansas and Tennessee were the other two. Only Texas A&M was respectable in that stretch.
Every team gets a tough stretch in their schedule even Alabama who will play a home, away, away, home, away, away, home stretch right in the middle of their season. It just so happens that two of those teams in their stretch are supposed to be horrible and Florida could very well be shittastic. To reiterate, Auburn's stretch features zero easy wins.
5. @Georgia, @Alabama. I don't know whose bright idea it was to approve this, but it's a dump truck of bullshit to give a school that kind of gauntlet not only in their rivalry games but also to close out the season. Some other schools have this issue as well (Alabama is @Tennessee and @LSU in back-to-back games with a bye between, LSU is @Auburn and @Florida in back-to-back weeks, and Florida is @Alabama and @Tennessee in back-to-back weeks). But looking at the quality of opponents, I'd say Auburn easily has the toughest back-to-back bullshit load of all even when considering Samford is between the two.
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