Okay, since I kind of backed myself all the way up to the first day of the season, I’ll provide links to all the individual conference breakdowns here:
And now, let us complete our yearly ritual.
First, the list of shame, that is, teams that scheduled more than one FCS opponent: Boston College, Kentucky, and North Carolina. It’s not great that two of the three are ACC teams, but hey, at least there’s only three.
This is normally where the best schedule list would appear, but I’m having a bit of a crisis. Virginia is the only school with a rating better than 2, but they’re awful, and one of those teams is Notre Dame, which other ACC teams are also benefiting from. Instead of a ranking, I’m going to produce a list of teams that I thought of as having better schedules:
- Virginia (2.25 legit, 1 FCS): @California-Los Angeles, Notre Dame, William & Mary, Boise State. It’s still a pretty good schedule, even minus Notre Dame, with the road trip to Pasadena and a visit from Boise.
- Texas (1.25, 0): @Notre Dame, Rice, California. Accounting for the ACC and Notre Dame business, this may be the best. A road trip to South Bend, and a visit from a (hopefully) up-and-coming Pac-12 team. If Cal had been better recently, this would have rated a lot higher.
- Nebraska (1.5, 0): Brigham Young, South Alabama, @Miami, Southern Mississippi. It’s not quite a visit to the OB, but that’s still an interesting trip.
- Northwestern (1.25, 1): Stanford, Eastern Illinois, @Duke, Ball State. This is a big schedule for a team like Northwestern, which is generally not great but it can at least be said to try.
And now, the conference averages, though again the ACC’s rating is probably inflated by Notre Dame:
- ACC (0.25)
- Pac-12 (0.22)
- Big Ten (0.203)
- Big 12 (0.15)
- SEC (0.08)
And that’s that! I’m sorry it was late this year, but better late than never. Next up: Thursday and Friday’s opening slate!