Rating the 2021 Non-Conference Slate: Intro

It is time.

That’s right folks, we’re cranking up the ol’ college football machine once again here at ASimSports. I couldn’t be happier to bring you a real, full season that actually has, well, non-conference play!

So here’s the skinny on how this works. My intrepid brother (whom I am unsure as to when he actually last watched a college football game from start to finish) and I rate every Power 5 team by how “legit” they are. This is extremely objective! But it’s fun and it gives you an idea of how excited the average college football might be to play say, oh, Wisconsin. We rate them on a scale of 0 to 1 in .25 increments. (Why not out of 4, which would be just like GPAs in college? I don’t know, I just realized that. Maybe we’ll change it for next year.) Generally speaking, 0’s are the Rutgers of the world, and 1’s are the Alabamas, Ohio States, and what have you.

This season we rated 21 teams as an 1. They were: Alabama, Auburn, California-Los Angeles, Clemson, Florida, Florida, State, Georgia, Louisiana State, Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Pennsylvania State, Southern California, Texas, Texas A&M, Washington, and Wisconsin.

We also do rate some non-P5 teams. Such teams that earned a rating for 2021 were: Central Florida (0.75), Cincinnati (0.75), Houston (0.5), and Boise State (0.5).

How do the Power 5 conferences rate, on average? Glad you asked!

  1. SEC (0.518)
  2. Pac-12 (0.5)
  3. Big 12 (0.5)
  4. Big Ten (0.446)
  5. ACC (0.429)

So the SEC finishes on top, as expected. I was surprised how well the Pac-12 did, but there’s a few solid programs and traditional powers out west, and perhaps the geography helps make them seem more exotic. (Let’s ignore that I live in California for a minute.)

So! Over the next week or so, well, hopefully for the season starts at any rate, we’ll lay it all out. Onward!