Once again, we’re back. My write-up from last year summarizes the game here, so I’ll just link to it.
If that’s too long for you, here’s the skinny: my brother and I rate every Power 5 team and some notable Group of Five teams on a scale: “no rating”, 0, .25, .5, .75, and 1. Why we don’t just do 0 to 4 is a great question, but it is what it is. The general idea is that a team with a rating of “1” is an appealing team that you’d be excited to play in your non-conference schedule, while “.75” is somewhat less exciting, and so on.
The list of “1”s is the 21 same as last year, but I’ll repeat it here for effect: Alabama, Auburn, California-Los Angeles, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Louisiana State, Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, Pennsylvania State, Southern California, Texas, Texas A&M, Washington, and Wisconsin.
We also rated the following Group of Five teams: Central Florida (0.5), Cincinnati (0.75), Houston (0.5), and Boise State (0.5).
Next up, we have our conference ranks, which I suspect may look different in the future (more on that later in the week). This is the rank of the average rating of every team in each Power 5 conference.
- Southeastern (0.536)
- Big Ten (0.464)
- Pacific-12 (0.458)
- Big 12 (0.475)
- Atlantic Coast (0.393)
The ACC really wishes East Coast bias was more of a thing – after all, no one is more East than them. Alas. But, while they may be last in appeal, they’re first alphabetically, so we’ll examine them team-by-team before anyone else. Onward, to the season!