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!

The college football season, mercifully, starts today. But before getting into the schedule for the weekend, let’s take a quick look back at the best, and worst, of this season’s out-of-conference scheduling.

First, some dishonorable mentions: North Carolina State (2 DI-AA teams, the only ones to do so this year) and Kentucky (for scheduling a neutral site game with Western Kentucky in Tennessee).

But who had the worst overall schedules in college football? Well, here’s a sample of all the teams that got a 0 for their scheduling:

• Virginia Tech: Appalachian State, @East Carolina, Arkansas State, Marshall. This is really kind of embarrassing. Appy State could well be the best team on the list. Nonetheless, it’s only the second or third worst schedule.
• Washington State: Idaho State, Nevada-Las Vegas, @San Diego State. See, Wazzou is just kind of terrible, so this is at least understandable. As in, they’re so bad that it’s entirely possible they’ll lose to SDSU.
• Mississippi State: @Memphis, Louisiana Tech, @Alabama-Birmingham, Tennessee-Martin. Also embarrassing. Miss State used to be bad, yes, but they’ve gotten better. There’s no reason to schedule like this anymore. Well, except for the four guaranteed wins I guess.
• Texas Tech: Texas State, @New Mexico, Nevada. It’s either these guys or Miss State that’s the worst. I’m going to go with this, simply because Texas Tech has been on the “shame” list for three consecutive years now, and it’s not like Tommy Tuberville’s going to rock the boat in this regard.

 So who has the top schedule in all the land? Again, I am mostly considering not only score, but also interesting ineter-sectional matchups that aren’t rivalry games. So, without further adieu, the top six OOC schedules for the 2011 season are:
6. Southern California: Minnesota, Syracuse, Notre Dame. Barely makes the list, but these are all major conference schools, technically. Er… maybe I should’ve just gone with a top 5. Anyway.
5. Maryland: West Virginia, Temple, Towson, N-Notre Dame. UMD and WVU do play a lot, but it’s not an every-year sort of affair. Combined with the ND game and this is pretty decent.
4. Florida State: Louisiana-Monroe, Charleston Southern, Oklahoma, @Florida. @Florida being a rivalry game hurts this schedule a bit, but that will be the icing on the cake if the Seminoles somehow triumph over the Sooners.
3. Oregon State: Sacramento State, @Wisconsin, Brigham Young. Again, this is a good slate, with a cross-country road trip to Madison and a visit from the Stormin’ Mormons.
2. Pittsburgh: Buffalo, Maine, @Iowa, Notre Dame, Utah. Feels like Pitt appears on this list every year, but at least they use the 5-game OOC schedule to their advantage. Yes, they play ND every year but Iowa is pretty underrated every year and Utah is Utah. Solid, and again, maybe a platform to do a little more than get to the Orange Bowl.
1. Louisiana State: N-Oregon, Northwestern State, @West Virginia, Western Kentucky. Oregon and WVU on the same schedule made this decision pretty easy. Especially coming from a conference usually accused of ducking interesting OOC games, LSU knocks it out of the park with two potentially great and interesting games.

And finally, let’s close with the conference “legit” averages. That is, the average “legit”-ness of each conference’s OOC schedule:

1. Pac-12: 0.323
2. ACC: 0.281
3. Big East: 0.263
4. Big 12: 0.25
5. Big Ten: 0.203
6. SEC: 0.203

The tie between the Big Ten and SEC was broken by the number of DI-AA teams played (10 vs. 12, respectively).

So, with that, let’s talk some actual football! I’m excited, you’re excited, we’re all excited! Stay tuned for the weekend TV guide.

And it is time, finally, for the Southeastern Conference. Fun fact: every SEC team plays a DI-AA team this year.

1. Louisiana State (2 legit, 1 DI-AA): N-Oregon, Northwestern State, @West Virginia, Western Kentucky. Mea culpa: apparently when I wrote the WVU preview I said that game would be in Baton Rouge. Well, it isn’t. Flip everything around and what I wrote still applies, I think. As for the Oregon game, go look at the Pac-12 post.
2. Georgia (1.5, 1): N-Boise State, Coastal Carolina, New Mexico State, @Georgia Tech. Man, I really hope Boise wins. That’s all I got for this.
3. Alabama (1, 1): Kent State, @Pennsylvania State, North Texas, Georgia Southern. A rare, but highly encouraged, SEC-Big Ten matchup with two traditional powers meeting. Always in favor of that. Also, at least this GSU won’t be quite the punching bag the other one was.
4. Arkansas (1, 1): Missouri State, New Mexico, Troy, N-Texas Agricultural and Mechanical. Even though it is part of a now long-running series, I still put Arkansas over Florida because the TAMU game isn’t required.
5. Florida (1, 1): Florida Atlantic, Alabama-Birmingham, Furman, Florida State. Unlike the Florida-Florida State game. This is pretty much a bare minimum schedule right here.
6. Auburn (0.75, 1): Utah State, @Clemson, Florida Atlantic, Samford. Again, see the above, re: optional OOC games versus rivalry games.
7. South Carolina (0.75, 1): N-East Carolina, Navy, Citadel, Clemson. East Carolina keeps fooling me. They should just join the Big East already.
8. Mississippi (0.5, 1): Brigham Young, Southern Illinois, @Fresno State, Louisiana Tech. This is almost kind of a real schedule for Ole Miss. BYU and a road game to a west coast school? Almost downright unheard of.
9. Tennessee (0.5, 1): Montana, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Middle Tennessee State. Not much to see here, moving on.
10. Vanderbilt (0.5, 1): Elon, Connecticut, Army, @Wake Forest. Well, even Vandy has to start from somewhere, and at least they’ve got a schedule that they should at least break even with.
11. Kentucky (0.25, 1): N-Western Kentucky, Central Michigan, Louisville, Jacksonville State. Note that the Louisville game is a rivalry game. Are these guys even trying? Note that the Western Kentucky game is at a neutral site: Nashville. I’m not sure who thought it’d be great for two Kentucky schools to play a game in Tennessee. For a long time I’ve joked that Memphis is actually the capital of Mississippi – maybe Nashville serves a similar role for their neighbors to the north?
12. Mississippi State (0, 1): @Memphis, Louisiana Tech, @Alabama-Birmingham, Tennessee-Martin. I wonder someone hoodwinked the Bulldogs into thinking Alabama still plays a couple of home games at Legion Field every year and didn’t realize they were going to play UAB until the schedule for this year had to be published.

Next up, some final thoughts. 

As per usual, the Pacific 12 leads the land in terms of scheduling out-of-conference teams. Somewhat bizarrely, though, they elected to keep the 9 game conference schedule despite now having 12 teams. I like having 9 conference games when that means the conference will play a full round-robin, but otherwise I’m not sure it makes sense. Yes, it produces more meaningful games, but otherwise there’s not a meaningful upside.

1. Southern California (1.5 legit, 0 DI-AA): Minnesota, Syracuse, @Notre Dame. USC always plays pretty decent OOC schedules, but this is about as low as you can currently go and say you schedule three BCS conference teams short of scheduling Vanderbilt and Duke.
2. Oregon State (1.5, 1): Sacramento State, @Wisconsin, Brigham Young. Nonetheless, the three BCS teams are sufficient to beat out Oregon State’s Wisconsin and BYU combo, though playing a DI-AA team certainly doesn’t help.
3. Stanford (1.25, 0): San Jose State, @Duke, Notre Dame. Well, they have Notre Dame on the schedule. In reality, their ticket to the national title game will probably be decided when they play Oregon.
4. Colorado (1.5, 0): @Hawaii, California, N-Colorado State, @Ohio State. Yes, that’s four non-conference games due to the Hawaii rule. Oh yeah, there’s also that bizarre already scheduled Cal game that is now a non-conference conference game. Strangeness all around. Remember, though I show the raw “legit” score this ranking is actually based on the average, which means the extra OOC game is accounted for (and hence why they rank below Stanford).
5. California-Los Angeles (1, 0): @Houston, San Jose State, Texas. This may actually be pretty tough for UCLA. Considering their defensive woes Case Keenum could well break the NCAA passing record in this game alone.
6. Oregon (1, 1): N-Louisiana State, Nevada, Missouri State. Oregon-LSU has to be one of the top intersectional matchups of the year. Yes, there’s also UGA-Boise State. That game, though, will lack Oregon’s frenetic offensive pace up against the “they have no idea what the hell they’re doing” pace of Les Miles and co.
7. Washington (1, 1): Eastern Washington, Hawaii, @Nebraska. Washington’s prospects in the return trip to Lincoln look, shall we say, dim.
8. Arizona State (1, 1): California-Davis, Missouri, @Illinois. Funny how, in a year where Missouri and Illinois stop their renewed series, Arizona State manages to play both. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
9. Utah (1, 1): Montana State, @Brigham Young, @Pittsburgh. Utah will try to earn its newfound major conference cred by beating the team that arguably launched it to where it is today, Pitt.
10. Arizona (1, 1): Northern Arizona, @Oklahoma State, Louisiana-Lafayette. I can’t think of anything funny to say about this schedule, so moving on.
11. California (0.25, 1): N-Fresno State, @Colorado, Presbyterian. Again, yes, that Colorado game is not a Pac-12 game. Whoops! Also, Presbyterian is located in Clinton, South Carolina, which is a heck of a long way from Berkeley in more ways than just distance, I would suspect.
12. Washington State (0, 1): Idaho State, Nevada-Las Vegas, @San Diego State. Well, there’s at least one win on this schedule for Paul Wulff and Co.

Next up, the SEC, and followed by a quick wrap-up.

Now, finally, here is the Big 12. Well, hopefully. It could well cease to exist by the time I finish writing this.

1. Oklahoma (1 legit, 0 DI-AA): Tulsa, @Florida State, Ball State. Oklahoma-Florida State may turn out to be one of the most pivotal games of the year for the preseason #1 team, because the rest of this OOC schedule won’t be. Still, though, the single game in Tallahassee was enough to vault the Sooners over Texas for the #1 spot here.
2. Texas (1, 0): Rice, Brigham Young, @California-Los Angeles. Quantity does not always beat quality. Though we did rate newly independent BYU this year, Texas should still handle them and moribund UCLA.
3. Baylor (1, 1): Texas Christian, Stephen F. Austin, Rice. It’s the Robert Griffin show down in Waco. Will it be enough to get them past TCU?
4. Iowa State (1, 1): Northern Iowa, Iowa, @Connecticut. Well, at least Iowa and Iowa State will no longer be playing for that awful corn trophy. I have a feeling we kind of hated on the Hawkeyes in our ratings, but oh well.
5. Kansas State (1, 1): Eastern Kentucky, Kent State, @Miami. Yes, this is that Miami. Otherwise this schedule is very Bill Synder-esque, which leads me to think that once Miami slides off the rotation we’ll see the K-State schedules of old.
6. Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (0.75, 1): Southern Methodist, Idaho, N-Arkansas. Once again, a school shuns the deafening environment of KIBBIE DOME by cowardly playing away from the CRUCIBLE OF POTATO PAIN. I still like the on-going series with Arkansas at Jerry Jones’s Intergalactic Space Palace, though.
7. Kansas (0.75, 1): McNeese State, Northern Illinois, @Georgia Tech. A good first step for KU would probably be to actually beat their DI-AA opponent this year. (No comment on the part where they beat us.)
8. Oklahoma State (0.5, 0): Louisiana-Lafayette, Arizona, @Tulsa. In case you’re wondering, it’s about 71.4 miles from Stillwater to Tulsa. Google Maps also tells me it takes an 1:14 to drive there, which given the way these two teams will probably sling the ball around may be how long it takes to play each quarter.
9. Missouri (0.5, 1): Miami, @Arizona State, Western Illinois. That’s the Miami in Oxford, OH. There’s also a game in Tempe, which is nice, I guess.
10. Texas Tech (0, 1): Texas State, @New Mexico, Nevada. Last year, that Nevada game probably would’ve been fun. As far as New Mexico goes, well, the team’s coach probably has a better chance of literally punching you in the mouth than his football team figuratively does.

Sorry if it feels like I’m a bit of a hurry, but well, that’s because I am. Anyway, next up is the Pac-12!