You wouldn’t believe the crap I’ve been taking since Sunday, when Ohio State was officially invited to the national championship game on Jan. 7. Unless you’re also an Ohio State fan living somewhere outside of Columbus.

Because then you’re hearing the same things. Jokes about the back door. The Luckeyes.
And a ton of actual disdain for Ohio State’s “cupcake schedule.”

OK. Let’s stop there. We’re going to take a look at Ohio State schedule — along with the schedules of the other teams that finished in the top 10 of the last AP poll. Let’s see if Ohio State is doing something we shouldn’t be doing — or if we’re doing something that everybody else does as a matter of course.

I’ll stipulate a few things before we begin:

1. I hated the fact that there’s a I-AA team on the schedule. Youngstown State is back again in 2008, and I hope it never happens again beyond that.
2. This year, the SEC was the toughest conference in the country.
3. It’s tough to really discuss conference schedules, because there’s little a team can do about the other teams in the conference and how tough they are from year to year. This was not a good season for the Big Ten. It happens. Somehow holding Ohio State accountable for the failings of the other teams in its conference seems a little pointless to me.

With those three admissions aside, let’s look at OSU’s non-conference sked for the 2007 season: Youngstown State, Akron, at Washington and Kent. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to create three categories that we’ll hang on those teams: “Oh, God, It’s A I-AA Team,” “Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time,” and “Cupcakes That Keep The Money At Home.”

Oh, God, It’s A I-AA Team. Obviously, Youngstown State fits that bill for us, and as I’ve said before, I don’t think we have any business playing I-AA schools. But are we alone? Nope. Georgia, Virginia Tech, Missouri, Kansas and Hawaii all played I-AA schools this year and the mighty Warriors in fact padded their perfect record with two, Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern. And here’s a fun extra thing, vis-a-vis the mighty SEC — eight of that conference’s 12 teams played I-AA opponents in 2007. Hm.

Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Our visit to Seattle was the second game of a home-and-home series that began in 2003. The series was scheduled years before that, back when Washington was consistently a solid-to-spectacular team. This year, not so much. The same phenomenon bit Oklahoma; that game against Miami had to look great when it was scheduled, but who knew Miami would start sucking like they did? Florida had Florida State. Hawaii played the same Washington team we did. And two of Southern Cal’s non-conference opponents — Nebraska and Notre Dame — weren’t even close to matching their reputations this season.

Cupcakes That Keep The Money At Home. This is a noble idea — playing smaller in-state schools so the big payouts for visiting teams stay in state. Unfortunately, it also has the effect of diluting your schedule, especially when you’re playing two of them — Akron and Kent — in the same year. But again, we’re not the only top 10 team to play these games. Florida scheduled an always-scary game against Florida International, Oklahoma played Tulsa and LSU — our opponent in the title game — had two, Tulane and Louisiana Tech.

I found only one other striking thing when looking through these schedules the other day — of the top 10 teams, only two — LSU and Virginia Tech — played each other. What does that say about the state of non-conference schedules these days?

It says to me that Ohio State is getting hammered for something that everyone else does.