Red meat Monday: PSU's non-con schedule

Penn State's non-conference schedule is bad this year. So bad that it's pretty much taken over the message boards and bar stools. Two MAC teams, the worst team in the Big East, and an FCS (I-AA) team will earn Penn State all the ridicule it gets. As we've heard analysts and media types call Penn State's non-conference schedule one of the worst, if not the worst, we can't help but agree. Actually, the Penn State fan base was the first to call out Tim Curley for such a weak 2010 schedule.

But is it the worst?

Matt Hayes of Sporting News doesn't think so:

1. Mississippi: at Memphis, Southeastern Louisiana, UAB, Northern Arizona
2. Penn State: Akron, Syracuse, Temple, Eastern Illinois
3. Rutgers: Howard, FIU, at Maryland, Texas Southern, at Army
4. Kansas State: Massachusetts, at Louisiana-Lafayette, at UCLA, Tennessee Tech
5. Indiana: Eastern Kentucky, Western Michigan, at Akron, at Virginia

Ok, so this is nothing to be proud of. Penn State should never be in the top-anything when it comes to easy scheduling. I always felt the MAC was the Big Ten's own heavy-duty FCS, which nullified any reason to schedule non-FBS opponents. And that brings up an interesting idea: What if three of those four teams stayed, but Eastern Illinois were swapped out for a BCS opponent, even a bad one?

We might not even be discussing this right now.