About the Ratings

Each offseason, my brother and I rate every Power 5 team on the basis of how excited you’d be to see that team on your non-conference schedule. The possible ratings are “no rating”, 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1. “1” is the best, as evidenced by the list of 22 teams that earned a 1 this year: Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Mississippi (new for 2025), North Carolina (new for 2025), Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State, Southern Cal (new for 2025), Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Washington, and Wisconsin.

How does each conference fare in terms of the ratings? Well, let’s see:

1. SEC (0.70 average rating)
2. Big Ten (0.55)
3. ACC (0.38)
4. Big 12 (0.375)

That’s mostly what you’d expect, except for maybe the ACC there. At any rate, let’s dive right into the teams. (FCS teams are in italics.)

ACC

1. Miami (2 legit, 1 FCS): Notre Dame, Bethune-Cookman, South Florida, Florida. It’s always a bit odd to figure how to count Notre Dame for ACC teams, but suffice it to say this will be one of the early season marquee games, especially in terms of a yardstick for Mario Cristobal “figuring it out”. In addition, we support playing in-state rivals and other schools besides.
2. Syracuse (2, 1): N-Tennessee, Connecticut, Colgate, @Notre Dame. ‘Cuse-Tennessee is, well, it’s definitely a neutral site game this year.
3. Florida State (2, 1): Alabama, East Texas A&M, Kent State, @Florida. FSU-Bama is potentially the Week 1 game, and we’ll discuss it more when we get there. Note that we tend to not really count rivals you play every year, which is why Miami gets credit for the Gators but FSU doesn’t.
4. Georgia Tech (1.75, 1): @Colorado, Gardner-Webb, Temple, Georgia. We’ll write more about our games in Week 1 and Week 14, but suffice it to say people still ask us about “that Georgia-Georgia Tech game” the instant we mention we’re Georgia Tech alums. (As in, it happened like two days ago.) Switching to first person for a moment: I can’t say I care for this!
5. Clemson (1.5, 1): Louisiana State, Troy, Furman, @South Carolina. Clemson is expected to be Back this season, so actually beating their SEC opponent in Week 1 will go a long way toward establishing that.
6. Boston College (1.5, 1): Fordham, @Michigan State, Connecticut, Notre Dame. We appreciate the random road trip to East Lansing, and hey at least UConn is local.
7. Stanford (1.5, 0): @Hawaii, @Brigham Young, San Jose State, Notre Dame. Stanford might be one of the worst teams in the Power 4 this year, and this schedule will not help. Hawaii should still be a win, but that will almost certainly be the high point of the season. We can definitely see them struggling in Provo, and even the Bill Walsh Memorial Classic will be a challenge down on the Farm.
8. Pittsburgh (1.25, 1): Duquesnse, Central Michigan, @West Virginia, Notre Dame. The preseason vibes around Pitt seem to be pretty good, that said, all I can say about this schedule is: make the Brawl permanent. Thank you.
9. Southern Methodist (1.25, 1.5): East Texas A&M, Baylor, @Missouri State, @Texas Christian. Two things to note here. For starters, Missouri State is our first transitioning team mentioned here, and the fact they got SMU go up to Springfield is sure something. In the meantime, the Skillet is on the line again (yet another game that should be permanent). Overall, the main thing for the Mustangs after their playoff run last year is… well, the degree of difficulty is going to be a lot higher this year, both OOC (I haven’t mentioned Baylor yet, so) and within the ACC.
10. North Carolina (1, 1): Texas Christian, @Charlotte, Richmond, @Central Florida. There’s got to be a lot of strange things about Bill Belichek’s life right now. We are talking (of course) about an OOC roadtrip (which, how did they manage to schedule two in one season?), but not Charlotte: that’ll be in a NFL stadium. Bill knows those. No, it has been a very long time since Bill found himself in a rickety, surrounded on all sides by bleachers stadium that is formally known as the Bounce House. Long before then, though, that opener against TCU is going to be instructive.
11. North Carolina State (1, 1): East Carolina, Virginia, Campbell, @Notre Dame. Yes, Virginia, that’s, uh, Virginia on NC State’s OOC schedule. Why? Because in the 17 team ACC, they don’t play very often. So here we are.
12. California (0.5, 1): @Oregon State, Texas Southern, Minnesota, @San Diego State. Okay, we appreciate a desire to schedule well and play some former Pac-12 opponents, but it is kinda weird that the only other California team on here is a trip to San Diego (which, in fairness, whom amongst us would turn down a trip to San Diego?).
13. Virginia Tech (0.5, 1): N-South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Old Dominion, Wofford. Virginia Tech is in as weird place these days, and them re-establishing themselves as competent means winning two of the three FCS games here.
14. Virginia (0.5, 1): Coastal Carolina, @North Carolina State, William & Mary, Washington State. This could be kind of fun, except that the expectations for UVA aren’t all that high this year.
15. Louisville (0.5, 1): Eastern Kentucky, James Madison, Bowling Green, Kentucky. This is the most 0.5 OOC schedule possible.
16. Duke (0, 1): Elon, Illinois, @Tulane, @Connecticut. This one may be rated a “0”, but there be dragons here. Illinois is going to be decent this year, and the road trip to New Orleans will certainly present a challenge. The road trip to Storrs, well, get your “basketball season” jokes ready.
17. Wake Forest (0, 1.5): Kennesaw State, Western Carolina, @Oregon State, Delaware. Delaware is the other team moving on up to FCS. Meanwhile, there is some intrigue on this schedule. First, can Kennesaw pull a weird upset again? Second, well, any east coast team venturing to Corvallis is going to raise at least one eyebrow here.

Big Ten

1. Ohio State (1, 1): Texas, Grambling State, Ohio. “Hey”, you might say, “what gives? The Buckeyes have a FCS team and Wisconsin and Michigan don’t!” And that’s completely reasonable! But Ohio State-Texas is the likeliest to be a title game rematch out of the three, and, well, we just had to respect that.
2. Wisconsin (1, 0): Miami, Middle Tennessee State, @Alabama. Okay, on to Wisconsin. The trip to Tuscaloosa is the highlight here.
3. Michigan (1, 0): New Mexico, @Oklahoma, Central Michigan. After this, this is going to go downhill quick, and we just wanted to say that we appreciate each of these three games on this schedule so far. The Big Ten on a whole seems to be on this quest to de-emphasize interesting out-of-conference schedules and legislate their way into the playoff. It’s frankly unbecoming of one of the best overall conferences.
4. Purdue (1, 1): Ball State, Southern Illinois, @Notre Dame. Purdue gets two in-state opponents on this slate, but suffice it to say we like their chances against Ball State better, than, you know.
5. Southern California (1, 0.5): Missouri State, Georgia Southern, @Notre Dame. Well, at least Missouri State will get a trip to LA along with that paycheck.
6. Oregon (0.75, 1): Montana State, Oklahoma State, Oregon State. Unfortunately the Ducks don’t play Ohio State in the regular season this year to completely sweep the OSU slate.
7. California-Los Angeles (0.5, 0): Utah, @Nevada-Las Vegas, New Mexico. The trip to UNLV could be interesting, at least, if the Rebels are any good.
8. Illinois (0.25, 1): Western Illinois, @Duke, Western Michigan. Things start to get kinda dire from this point forward, and we’ll note we’re not actually even halfway through.
9. Washington (0, 1): Colorado State, California-Davis, @Washington State. Yeah, techncially there’s some P4 opponents below, but we appreciate that the Apple Cup is still a thing (for now). Also, Davis is the spicy kind of FCS team.
10. Nebraska (0, 1): N-Cincinnati, Akron, Houston Christian. When we (and likely Cornhusker fans) wish they’d play more Big 12 opponents, a neutral site game with Cincy is not quite what we had in mind.
11. Minnesota (0, 1): Buffalo, Northwestern State, @California. We’re not sure the world is ready for a Goldy-Oski matchup.
12. Iowa (0, 1): Albany, @Iowa State, Massachusetts. This is definitely a schedule, though at least there’s a rivalry game.
13. Michigan State (0, 1): Western Michigan, Boston College, Youngstown State. BC is the last P4 opponent we’ll see on this list.
14. Northwestern (0, 1): @Tulane, Western Illinois, Louisiana-Monroe. Though in fairness the Wildcats are going to New Orleans, but then again, who could blame them?
15. Rutgers (0, 1): Ohio, Miami, Norfolk State. Playing both Ohio and Miami is possibly the most B1G thing Rutgers has ever done.
16. Maryland (0, 1): Florida Atlantic, Northern Illinois, Towson. This is certainly a schedule.
17. Indiana (0, 1): Old Dominion, Kennesaw State, Indiana State. Tell y’all what, if the Hoosiers struggle out of the gate against ODU, that could portend a pretty radical departure from last year’s dream season.
18. Pennsylvania State (0, 1): Nevada, Florida International, Villanova. What an embarrassing schedule for a nominal national title contender. Penn State will likely be down here again next year, though they’ll play a P4 opponent (Syracuse) in 2027. Well, provided they don’t cancel it.

Big 12

1. Oklahoma State (1, 1): Tennessee-Martin, @Oregon, Tulsa. The Pokes are a bit of a wildcard this year, but the trip to Eugene is still one of hte more interesting trips in this conference.
2. Texas Christian (1, 1): @North Carolina, Abilene Christian, Southern Methodist. We’ll have a lot more to say about TCU-UNC next week, so we’ll instead say: y’all gotta keep playing for that skillet.
3. Baylor (1, 1): Auburn, @Southern Methodist, Samford. Like… most teams in the Big 12, the Bears could finish anywhere between 1 and about 14, but this will be a challenging OOC schedule.
4. Central Florida (1, 1): Jacksonville State, North Carolina A&T, North Carolina. We already wrote about UNC’s trip to the Bouncy Castle, so there’s not much else to comment on here.
5. Utah (0.75, 1): @California-Los Angeles, California Polytechnic, @Wyoming. The Utes will cash in some regional trips. I’m sure the trip to the Rose Bowl will be a tad more interesting than the one to Laramie.
6. Colorado (0.5, 0.5): Georgia Tech, Delaware, Wyoming. We will have a lot more to say about GT-Colorado next week.
7. Cincinnati (0.5, 1): N-Nebraska, Bowling Green, Northwestern State. That’s technically a neutral site game against the Huskers, but it’s at Arrowhead, so…
8. Arizona (0.5, 1): Hawaii, Weber State, Kansas State. It’s yet another case of two teams in the same conference playing each other, though unlike the ACC case this is because the series was already scheduled before the Pac-12 fell apart.
9. Iowa State (0.5, 1): South Dakota, Iowa, @Arkansas State. That visit to Arkansas State seems to be a home-and-home, though I can’t rule out a TBD return visit to Ames.
10. Kansas (0.25, 1): Fresno State, Wagner, @Missouri. BORDER WAR BACK. It should be back every season but we’ll take it.
11. West Virginia (0.25, 1): Robert Morris, @Ohio, Pittsburgh. The Brawl will take a break for a couple years after this, but at least it’s schedule to come back.
12. Brigham Young (0.25, 1): Portland State, Stanford, @East Carolina.
13. Houston (0, 1): Stephen F. Austin, @Rice, @Oregon State. The Cougars definitely have some traps set with this schedule. Rice beat them at home two years ago, and they’ll have a fun new option-based offense to boot. And trips to Corvallis are rarely fun.
14. Texas Tech (0, 1): Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Kent State, Oregon State. In case you haven’t heard, Texas Tech has (possibly) one of the most expensive rosters in the history of college football. Not sure this slate will tell us a lot of about it, though some trouble with the Beavers could be a sign they may not make it through BIg 12 play unscathed.
15. Kansas State (0, 1): North Dakota, Army, @Arizona. We already explained the Arizona thing, so… next!
16. Arizona State (0, 1): Northern Arizona, @Mississippi State, Texas State. The Sun Devils were one of the most fun teams of 2024, but, well, a lot of what made them fun isn’t there anymore. We’ll find out quickly how that translates to 2025 with that trip to Starkville.

Pac-12

Unfortunately, both of the Pac-12 schools are playing completely independent schedules (outside of playing each other) this season. This renders the concept of an “OOC” schedule meaningless. Further, unless we start doing all OOC schedules as a thing, going forward this is the last time we’ll have the Pac-12 on here as a separate entity.

Our official position on Oregon State and Washington State getting screwed out of power-conference football is that it sucks, and that it’ll probably happen again. The Purdues, Cals, and Wake Forests of the world should be worried.

SEC

1. Alabama (2, 1): @Florida State, Louisiana-Monroe, Wisconsin, Eastern Illinois. We gave Bama a slight edge here because FSU isn’t really a rival, and in years past it’s the sort of game that probably would’ve been in Atlanta or something. Throw in the Badgers coming to Tuscaloosa, and this could be interesting.
2. Florida (2, 1): Long Island, South Florida, Miami, Florida State. Usually we enjoy making fun of Florida’s propensity to never leave the state, we do applaud playing the Canes. And USF could be an interesting early test this season.
3. South Carolina (1.25, 1): N-Virginia Tech, South Carolina State, Coastal Carolina, Clemson. We don’t care for the neutral site part of this, but hey, at least they’re meeting in Charlotte. The Gamecocks won’t need to leave the state otherwise for their OOC matchups.
4. Texas (1, 0): @Ohio State, San Jose State, Texas-El Paso, Sam Houston State. Once again, the Longhorns stand out in the SEC: a big time helmet versus helmet game and no FCS games. We can’t really rank them higher than this, but spiritually this is more like the 2nd best OOC schedule in the SEC.
5. Texas A&M (1, 1): Texas-San Antonio, Utah State, @Notre Dame, Samford. Meanwhile, did anyone notice Notre Dame is playing Texas A&M this year? The Irish do a good job of usually rotating in one or two non-traditional rivals (or non-ACC teams). This will be the first time the Aggies have been to South Bend in 25 years.
6. Oklahoma (1, 1): Illinois State, Michigan, @Temple, Kent State. Texas-Ohio State is getting the shine, and what’s left over is generally directed at Alabama-Wisconsin. But don’t sleep on Oklahoma-Michigan, which will feature two teams with big hopes and lots of question marks in Week 2. Oh, and yeah, there’s a trip to go play in the Eagles’ stadium, though fortunately for the Sooners the other team will be the Temple Owls.
7. Louisiana State (1, 1): @Clemson, Louisiana Tech, Southeastern Louisiana, Western Kentucky. Unlike OU-Michigan, the questions are more one-sided for the Tigers-Tigers matchup. Clemson is expected to be a contender, but the questions swirl around Brian Kelly’s bunch as he attempts to together a strong SEC run. The narrative goes something like this: “can this coach, whom no one likes, at least do the thing we hired him for?” A bad loss to Clemson may cause Kelly’s sweet to get hot in a hurry.
8. Arkansas (1, 1): Alabama A&M, Arkansas State, @Memphis, Notre Dame. The main thing to watch on this schedule (other than, once again, Notre Dame) is that the Arkansas State game be the last home game for the Razorbacks in Little Rock. Honestly, it’s probably been a long time coming, as math just maths. War Memorial Stadium currently seats around 54,000, while Razorback Stadium seats 76,000. While Little Rock is still bigger than Fayetteville, the latter is faster growing and the difference just isn’t nearly what it used to be.
9. Auburn (0.5, 1): @Baylor, Ball State, South Alabama, Mercer. We’ve covered the trip to Waco above, and there’s otherwise not much to discuss here (well, okay, it would be funny if they lose to South Alabama, but they won’t).
10. Mississippi State (0.5, 1): @Southern Mississippi, Arizona State, Alcorn State, Northern Illinois. Miss State might probably won’t be good, but they should be able to navigate at least three of these games successfully.
11. Georgia (0.5, 1): Marshall, Austin Peay, Charlotte, @Georgia Tech. As as I was writing this post, the SEC announced they’re going to move to a 9 game conference schedule next season, and that teams would be required to schedule 1 P4 team. That just has to be to protect the SEC teams with out-of-conference annual rivalries (as a reminder, that’s not just Georgia, but also Kentucky, South Carolina, and Florida).
12. Kentucky (0.5, 1): Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Tennessee Tech, @Louisville. While those annual rivalries get dinged a bit on our rankings, that’s not to say we take them for granted. These rivalry games are part of what makes college football college football.
13. Vanderbilt (0.25, 1): Charleston Southern, @Virginia Tech, Georgia State, Utah State. Vandy could well go 4-0 against this schedule.
14. Missouri (0, 1): Central Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts. It’s been a huge bummer that conference realignment has killed a lot more rivalries than it’s brought back (for ever Texas-Texas A&M that’s back, there’s multiple Bedlams that are endangered). We can only hope that the annual P4 requirement helps bring back games like the Border War and Bedlam.
15. Tennessee (0, 1): N-Syracuse, East Tennessee State, Alabama-Birmingham, New Mexico State. It was a tough call to decide whether the Vols or Rebels got this spot. Ultimately, we went with giving the Vols credit for a neutral site game against a Power 4 team.
16. Mississippi (0, 1): Georgia State, Tulane, Washington State, The Citadel. That said, it certainly feels way more likely the Rebels lose to either Tulane or Wazzu than the Vols losing to Syracuse.

Okay, that’s it for the overview. But we’re going to introduce something new this year. We went ahead and rating the slates for the entire G5 to get an idea of who has the most difficult schedule in that group. Generally speaking, those slates break down into two categories. The first, and more common, is getting that money. As most readers are probably aware, the deals where G5 teams play P4 teams generally involve 1 to 3 visits to the P4 team’s home stadium, and hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to the G5 team. Very occasionally, as seen above, these deals can include a road trip for the P4 team.

The Annual Acknowledgement of the Kent State Golden Flashes

The next category are teams that are generally at the upper crust of the G5 universe, your Boise States and Tulanes of the world, essentially. They’re hoping that if they can pick off a P4 team, they’ll a real shot at the prize.

So let’s take a look at the top 5 G5 out-of-conference schedules.

1. Kent State (2.25, 1): Merrimack, @Texas Tech, @Florida State, @Oklahoma. Yeah, so Kent State getting that bag is a bit of a thing:
   (h/t to the Sickos Committee)
2. South Florida (2.25, 1): Boise State, @Florida, @Miami, South Carolina State. It’s pretty well known that USF lagged behind for many years and is now desperately trying to catch up. This schedule seems to be a bit of an in-betweener, that is, getting that bag without having to travel too far, and see if maybe you can knock off the kings of the non-power football.
3. Charlotte (2, 1): N-Appalachian State, North Carolina, Monmouth, @Georgia. Naturally, the neutral site game against App State is the NFL stadium (capacity: 74,867) but the UNC game is at the on-campus stadium (capacity: 15,314).
4. New Mexico (1.75, 1): @Michigan, Idaho State, @California-Los Angeles, New Mexico State. We appreciate skipping a potential third paycheck to hold on to the rivarly game.
5. Temple (1.5, 1): @Massachusetts, Howard, Oklahoma, @Georgia Tech. This is another in-between sort of schedule. There’s a couple of wins here, and they got Oklahoma to show up to Philadelphia. (Though getting to play in the Eagles’ stadium probably didn’t hurt.)

On to the traditional closers.

FCS Watch

No team plays more than 1 true FCS team, but several do play one of Delaware or Missouri State, who are both in their first year of moving up to FBS. The following Power 4 teams play a FCS team and one of the two transitioning teams.

Delaware opponents: Wake Forest and Colorado
Missouri State opponents: Southern Methodist (at Missouri State, even!), Southern California

The following teams play no true FCS teams, shouts out:

• Stanford (though, uh, they probably should have?)
• Texas
• Southern California (though as noted above they play Missouri State)
• California-Los Angeles
• Tulane (pretty rare for a non-power team to play no FCS opponents)
• Sam Houston State

Power 4 vs. Power 4 Watch

Obviously we acknowledged these teams above, but as a summary these are the Power 4 teams that play more than one Power 4 team. (Note: we aren’t counting ACC teams that play Notre Dame.)

• Alabama (Florida State, Wisconsin)
• Baylor (Auburn, Southern Methodist)
• Clemson (Louisiana State, South Carolina)
• Florida (Miami, Florida State)
• Florida State (Alabama, Florida)
• North Carolina (Texas Christian, Central Florida)
• Southern Methodist (Baylor, Texas Christian)
• Texas Christian (North Carolina, Southern Methodist)
• Virginia Tech (South Carolina, Vanderbilt)

Averaging the Averages

And finally, here’s each conference’s average schedule rating.

1. ACC (0.276)
2. SEC (0.195)
3. Big 12 (0.156)
4. Big Ten (0.12)

Somehow this is the same order we have the conferences in the spreadsheet we use to figure all this out. Weird.

At any rate, that’s that. It’s now to start talking about the actual games, and we’ll be here every week once again to do so. See you then!