Category Archives: college football

Rating the 2012 Non-Conference Slate: Big East

It’s the Big East. Let’s get this over with.

  1. Syracuse (2.25 legit, 1 FCS): Northwestern, N-Southern California, Stony Brook, @Minnesota, @Missouri. 4 BCS conference teams out of 5 non-conference games is kind of crazy, even if one of them is Minnesota. Nonetheless, this may say more about Syrcause than anything else. If they were as good as they were in the late-90’s, would their schedule look like this? I doubt it.
  2. South Florida (1.5, 1): Tennessee-Chattanooga, @Nevada, @Ball State, Florida State, @Miami. USF benefits from playing both FSU and Miami (as in, “da U”). They might be the only major conference team to have three non-conference road games.
  3. Pittsburgh (1.25, 2): Youngstown State, Virginia Tech, Garnder-Webb, @Buffalo, @Notre Dame. The usual matchup with Notre Dame is in, but sadly, the Backyard Brawl is out. Also, traveling to Buffalo? I assume there’s a 3-for-1 involved here.
  4. Rutgers (1, 1): @Tulane, Howard, @Arkansas, Kent State, Army. Again, traveling to Tulane? Well, I guess they can sell travel packages for New Orleans or some such.
  5. Cincinnati (1, 2): Delaware State, N-Virginia Tech, Miami, Fordham, @Toledo. Again, the only thing I can figure for this rash of mid-major road games are 3-for-1 deals. The Big East needs to get to 9 teams if for no other reason than because this 5 non-conference games thing isn’t really working out for them, I’d say. Of course, I just remembered that this is Pitt and Syracuse’s last year in the Big East. Whoops!
  6. Temple (0.5, 1): Villanova, Maryland, Pennsylvania State, Army. Yes, that’s right, this is your only team in major college football with an 11 game schedule. That’s a heck of a way to dive back in, though. The Owls will play their inter-city rival in Villanova, and then play Pitt in-conference and Penn State at home. Not a bad way re-introduction.
  7. Louisville (0.5, 1): Kentucky, Missouri State, North Carolina, @Florida International, @Southern Mississippi. The Cardinals go on the road to both FIU and Southern Miss? Color me perplexed.
  8. Connecticut (0.5, 0.5): Massachusetts, North Carolina State, @Maryland, @Western Michigan, Buffalo. Well, at least they’ll have that 5 game OOC schedule thing fixed soon.

This will probably be the last year I include the Big East in this feature. Next year they will lose Pitt and Syracuse (the last two programs other than Rutgers that have any vague semblance of “tradition” or “history”) and add Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, Southern Methodist, Boise State, and San Diego State. At that point, they’ll basically be what Conference USA was before all these shenanigans started. Provided it even happens at all, which I honestly still have doubts about.

    Rating the 2012 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

    First on the docket is the Atlantic Coast Conference. The format for this, and subsequent posts, is to list each team from 1-12 with the number of legit points in their OOC schedule and then number of FCS (the subdivision formerly known as DI-AA). There are lots of ties of course, which tend to be broken in arbitrary ways. Usually, I tend to favor a quantity of other major conference teams over quality simply because it’s harder to predict the ups-and-downs of your opponents (unless you’re scheduling Duke) and so playing two major conference teams is usually braver than playing just one. I also tend to slightly discount teams that are each other’s yearly rivalry. Generally, though, my main tiebreaker is the number of FCS teams played. Most teams play 1, but some play one or one of the transitional teams (which I count as “half” a FCS team), and a select few even play two. Anyway, let’s do this. Also, a “N-” means the game is at a neutral site, and teams in italics are FCS.

    1. Clemson (1.75 legit, 1 FCS): N-Auburn, Ball State, Furman, South Carolina. This is what I meant when I said that sometimes this is somewhat arbitrary. The neutral site game with Auburn should be fun once again, though, and is the most appealing out-of-conference ACC matchup.
    2. Miami (1.75, 1): @Kansas State, Bethune-Cookman, Notre Dame, South Florida. Yes, there’s three major conference teams here (though how much does the Big East really count anymore?) but I couldn’t put this over the top. Miami-Notre Dame is one of the few things that probably makes people wish it were the 80’s again, though.
    3. Florida State (1.5, 2): Murray State, Savannah State, @South Florida, Florida. This is your reminder that South Florida is not, in fact, in what most people would call southern Florida. Anyway, they should’ve just gone for the sweep and scheduled FAU and FIU.
    4. Virginia (1.25, 1): Richmond, Pennsylvania State, @Texas Christian, Louisiana Tech. I originally had Boston College ahead, but it’s not UVA’s fault what’s going on at Penn State and going to TCU is certainly a brave choice.
    5. Boston College (1.25, 1): Maine, @Northwestern, @Army, Notre Dame. Whereas BC plays Notre Dame all the time, and while Northwestern isn’t awful anymore they’re still Northwestern.
    6. Georgia Tech (1, 1): Presbyterian, Middle Tennessee State, Brigham Young, Georgia. There’s very little exciting about our OOC schedule this year. We play BYU for the first time since my freshman year in 2003. Hopefully we win this time.
    7. Virginia Tech (1, 1): Austin Peay, @Pittsburgh, Bowling Green, N-Cincinnati. This had the potential to be more exciting, but Pitt and Cincy are just too wildly inconsistent to get worked up about.
    8. Wake Forest (1,1): Liberty, Army, @Notre Dame, Vanderbilt. The Wake Forest-Vandy series continues, which is nice to see, though occasionally a bit confusing since they have the exact same color scheme.
    9. Maryland (0.75, 1): William & Mary, @Temple, Connecticut, @West Virginia. Maryland is getting kind of beat down thanks to the introduction of zeroes this year, but it’s not like they thought Temple was going to be in the Big East when they scheduled them. Also, how many points will WVU score on Maryland? My guess is somewhere around “a lot”.
    10. Duke (0.75, 1): Florida International, @Stanford, North Carolina Central, Memphis. I wonder if Duke will have more fans in Palo Alto than when Wake Forest came out here. I’ve got my doubts.
    11. North Carolina State (0.75, 1.5): N-Tennessee, @Connecticut, South Alabama, The Citadel. NC State playing Tennessee in Atlanta. It sort of makes sense, I guess. Maybe. Okay, not really, but it’s happening anyway.
    12. North Carolina (0.5, 1): Elon, @Louisville, East Carolina, Idaho. There’s not a whole lot to get excited about here, that’s for sure.

    Somewhat begrudgingly, next up is the Big East.

    Rating the 2012 Non-Conference Slate: Prologue

    Yes folks, we’re back! Let’s talk about football.

    We’ve slightly tweaked the rules for this scheduling rating thing. For starters, there are four transitional members to the top level of Division I this year: Massachusetts, South Alabama, Texas State, and Texas-San Antonio. I’ve counted each of these as half a DI-AA (or DI-FCS) team, as they are not (for the most part) eligible for bowl games or conference championships. In years past, we also stuck to rating all BCS conference teams with a 0.25, 0.5, .75, or 1. However, we have now begun employing the zero rating for certain teams: Boston College, Duke, Maryland, Iowa State, Kansas, Connecticut, Temple, Indiana, Minnesota, Purdue, Colorado, and Kentucky. Remember, this rating is a entirely subjective rating on our part of teams that we consider the “most desirable” for out-of-conference play, which as just as much to do with perception as it does them actually being any good (hence why Notre Dame still carries a 0.75).

    Also worth noting is the list of teams rated with a “1”: Florida State, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Oregon, Southern California, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana State. Breaking it down by conference, that’s 2 for the ACC, 3 for the Big 12, 0 for the Big East, 5 for the Big Ten, 2 for the Pac-12, and 5 for the SEC.

    Averaging everything out by conference, and you get:

    1. SEC (0.696 legit average)
    2. Big Ten (0.583)
    3. Big 12 (0.527)
    4. Pac-12 (0.5)
    5. ACC (0.479)
    6. Big East (0.357)

    The addition of zeroes definitely hurt the ACC, Big East, and Big 12 the most, but this is probably a more accurate rating overall.

    Anyway, we’ll be doing the usual conference-by-conference break down over the next several days. Until then!

    If I Were on the Selection Committee

    Editor’s note: So I had this big long post in process when I realized that I was handily beaten to the punch by several people with a better idea of they’re talking about. So I’ll link to one such example here: http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/2012/6/21/3105594/college-football-playoffs-selection-committee and then just post what I originally wrote below.

    So everyone and their brother by now knows that college football will, in two years, begin using a 4-team, seeded playoff with teams and seeds chosen by a selection committee. The committee will prioritize won-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head records, and whether a team is a conference champion.

    We don’t currently know who is going to be on the committee. But if they asked me, I would’ve picked the following teams.

    2011
    Let’s start with this past year. LSU, Oklahoma State, and Oregon are all locks to be in. But we’re already at our first conundrum. Using last year’s BCS standings as a guide, we have to go all the way to the 10th place team, Wisconsin, to get another conference champion. Within the top 5, we even have three teams that already lost to other teams in the top 5 (Alabama, Oregon, and Stanford). Likely overwhelming conventional wisdom would favor Alabama once again. I would tweak the matchups slightly to avoid rematches, so LSU would face Oklahoma State and Alabama would play Oregon in the first round.
    On the outside looking in: also known as “if they had more than four teams, who would be next?” Really, I sort of feel this field is weak as is, since LSU already beat two of the other teams in the playoff. I would probably extend Wisconsin an invite as Big Ten champion. Outside of that, it’s hard to say without including other teams that lost to teams that are already in, like Stanford and Arkansas. Does Boise sneak in? If they hadn’t lost to TCU, they would’ve been right on the bubble, but as-is it’s hard to even say they’re in the next four due to their schedule.

    2010
    In 2010, Auburn and Oregon are obvious choices. TCU’s undefeated romp is also rewarded, however. Again, who’s the fourth? The Big Ten had a 3-way tie between Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Michigan State. Wisconsin rose highest in the rankings, likely due to them having the foresight to lose before the other two teams. But with only four teams, that’s the system we have, and so the Badgers get the coveted fourth spot.
    On the outside looking in: Where to start? Stanford was pretty good that year and 5th in the polls, so they would likely be strong candidates. Then there’s the other two teams in the Big Ten tie – if you include one, then at that point you pretty much have to include the other.

    2009
    There were five undefeated teams in 2009: Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State. With won-loss records the #1 priority for the committee, surely the couldn’t leave an undefeated out in this scenario, could they? Even though they lack a signature victory, the Bearcats’s strength of schedule is probably slightly better than TCU’s or Boise’s, so they get in. From there, Boise’s signature win against Oregon pays-off in terms of four-seed.
    On the outside looking in: Boise, for starters. Florida then as the only major conference 1-loss team. Then there’s a succession of 2-loss major conference champions: Oregon, Ohio State, and Georgia Tech. The last of which makes me even more retroactively depressed about those losses to Miami and UGA. Oh, well, and the fact that I guess in retrospect none of it would’ve matter anyway due to having to vacate our ACC title. Whoops.

    2008
    The apocalypse, basically. Utah and Boise State were the only undefeated teams, parked all the way at #6 and #9 in the BCS standings. There were 8 other teams in the top 10 with 1-loss records, including that wacky 3-way tie in the Big 12 South between Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech. At this point, I’m nearly tempted to just say “screw it” and take the top four conference champions: Oklahoma, Florida, USC, and Utah.
    On the outside looking in: Screw 8 teams, we probably would’ve needed 16 to settle all the arguments 2008 would’ve generated. Texas and Alabama are almost certainly in, as well as Penn State. Do we eschew/screw over Texas Tech, or go with Boise State at this point?

    2007
    Remember Bizarro Year? You know, the year that started with Michigan playing a DI-AA team for the first time ever and then losing? The top 10 is a bloodbath, with only two major conference 1-loss teams (Ohio State and Kansas – yes, Kansas, like I said, it was Bizarro Year). That said, we have 4 major conference champions right at the top, so we’ll go with Ohio State, LSU, Virginia Tech, and Oklahoma.
    On the outside looking in: Remember Hawaii? Yeah, they were undefeated in 2007. There are bunch of other major conference teams with two losses (and, yes, Kansas) but frankly I don’t feel like any of them had any really strong arguments for inclusion this year over the top 4.

    Bowl Games 2011: Epilogue

    Wherein this post has had more advance planning than LSU’s offense apparently did last night.

    The final tally is up over in the usual place. This year I managed to predict 24 games correctly. I honestly didn’t think I was doing that well until I looked back over the index. I’ve been doing this since the 1999 season, and this is the best I’ve ever done by a pretty decent margin. With 24 games correct and 11 wrong, I had a winning percentage of 68.57%. The last time I broke 60% was in 2006, and before this year my previous best percentage was in 2004, with 64.29%.

    So, yeah, go me! Too bad I didn’t allocate my confidence points correctly on ESPN, but alas.

    As we prepare to enter what will for sure be another turbulent offseason, I have to say this has been one of the strangest seasons I can remember. Unfortunately, this isn’t due to anything that happened on the field (2007 still holds that title), but more because it felt like each scandal that broke this year was trying to top the next. First Ohio State surprised us, then Miami shocked us (well, that was more the extent; I doubt anyone was surprised that there was a scandal at Miami), but then Penn State did both and then some.

    As per usual, this site will be more dormant over the next eight months, with occasional posts on soccer and baseball. But at some point the dust from various lawsuits will settle and everyone’s out-of-conference schedules will be known. Then I will rank them and tell you about them, and then try to get a post up once a week detailing that weekend’s games.

    So, until then.

    Quick addendum: apparently this is my 400th post on this website. Thanks for reading!