Category Archives: OOC schedules

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: Big Ten

Next up, the Big Ten. As usual, the “N-” prefix indicates a neutral site game and, though it’s not going to come up a lot in this one, italics indicates the team is in the FCS. Let’s get to it.

  1. Northwestern (1.25 legit, 0 FCS): Duke, Akron, Notre Dame. Hey, look, Duke got a 0.25 this year, okay? At this point David Cutcliffe has be considered more of a quaterback warlock than a guru.
  2. Ohio State (1, 0): Oregon State, @Texas Christian, Tulane. In reality, we’ve got some interesting ones here. While Oregon State stands no chance of winning, it could be a useful gauge for both teams. Ohio State @ TCU a stand-out game that will definitely warrant mention at the end of this series of posts.
  3. Maryland (1, 0): N-Texas, @Bowling Green, Temple. Let’s take a moment to Bowling Green’s loaded out-of-conference schedule: @Oregon, Maryland, Eastern Kentucky, and @Georgia Tech. That’s three Power 5 teams (and, well, three paychecks, but sshhh). As for the Terps, well, this could also be relatively loaded. Texas should be better this year, and Temple is occasionally feisty.
  4. Michigan (1, 0): @Notre Dame, Western Michigan, Southern Methodist. They don’t play Notre Dame every year, but nonetheless they play them reasonably often, so I had to rank them fourth instead, of you know, third.
  5. Pennsylvania State (0.25, 0): Appalachian State, @Pittsburgh, Kent State. I already wrote about playing Pitt, but the gist of it is that it’s a Good Thing. The rest of this schedule is, like a Murphy bed, functional.
  6. Nebraska (0.25, 0): Akron, Colorado, Troy State. Speaking of dormant rivalries, I wholly support former Big 8/12 teams playing each other again. Especially when neither of them is still in the Big 12.
  7. Michigan State (0.25, 0): Utah State, @Arizona State, Central Michigan. I enjoy that Michigan State is playing two Western teams, and I enjoy even more that they’re going on the road to Tempe. Surely more than one Spartan will leave wondering why they didn’t consider Arizona State.
  8. Illinois (0.25, 1): Kent State, Western Illinois, N-South Florida. As I’m sure I’ll say a few weeks from now, that USF game is at Wrigley Field for some reason. As for this schedule, Illinois are really, really hoping that they win two f these games.
  9. Iowa (0.25, 1): Northern Illinois, Iowa State, Northern Iowa. NIU is pretty spicy usually, the Cyclones are improving, and UNI usually makes the FCS playoffs every year. Look, Iowa should pretty much always go 3-0 against this slate, but I’m just saying there’s a chance.
  10. Purdue (0, 0): Eastern Michigan, Missouri, Boston College. I feels like a schedule with two P5 teams should rate higher, but alas, those are the breaks when those teams are Mizzou and Boston College. But hey, that Purdue-Mizzou game figures to be pretty poinsty, so this may wind up being a fun OOC schedule nonetheless.
  11. Wisconsin (0, 0): Western Kentucky, New Mexico, Brigham Young. Three games at home, no threat to the road-paving Wisconsin offense, three very probable victories.
  12. Indiana (0, 0): @Florida International, Virginia, Ball State. I think the Indianas of the world should try to schedule those trips to Boca Raton at the end of the season, but what do I know?
  13. Rutgers (0, 0): Texas State, @Kansas, Buffalo. Whatever the opposite of the “Game of the Week” concept is, I’m pretty sure Rutgers at Kansas is going to be it.
  14. Minnesota (0, 0): New Mexico State, Fresno State, Miami. That’s the Miami in Ohio at the end there, and all the games at at home, so, alas, the boats will continue to be rowed strictly in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First up is the ACC. FCS teams are indicated in italics and a “N-” prefix indicates a neutral site game. Onward!

  1. Florida State (2 legit, 1 FCS): Samford, Northern Illinois, @Notre Dame, Florida. It may top the list, but this isn’t an interesting OOC slate, per se, thanks to Florida being an annual rivalry and Notre Dame being a quasi-ACC member.
  2. Pittsburgh (1.25, 1): Albany, Pennsylvania State, @Central Florida, @Notre Dame. Meanwhile, Pitt gets credit for getting Penn State on the schedule, and that road trip to Orlando could definitely be a thing. This is the sort of schedule that, if they actually had any hope, could actually #PutPuttIn.
  3. Georgia Tech (1.25, 1): Alcorn State, @South Florida, Bowling Green, @Georgia. The Tennessee game last year was fun, but of course wound up being a stomach punch in a way that few other Georgia Tech games have been in the 15 years since I matriculated at MaTech. Suffice it to say, Alcorn State will be much less stressful.
  4. Louisville (1, 1): N-Alabama, Indiana State, Western Kentucky, Kentucky. I took a quick look to figure out if there were any other notable Indiana State alumni other than Larry Bird, who will presumably be mentioned often on the broadcast of that game. The answer, as it turns out, is “no, not really”.
  5. Miami (1,1): N-Louisiana State, Savannah State, @Toledo, Florida International. Strap in, because in addition to UCF and USF above, we’ve got some weird G5 road games coming. First up is the Canes going to… Toledo of all places. Oh, and yeah, they’ve got a neutral site opener with LSU, which should pretty quickly prove whether the current conventional wisdom about both of those teams is correct or not.
  6. Syracuse (1, 1): @Western Michigan, Wagner, Connecticut, N-Notre Dame. See what I mean? Though to Western Michigan’s credit, they’ve done a pretty good job over the years of getting major teams to visit. To be honest, I’ve been expecting this sort of arrangement to become more common for years because it allows major programs to save some money.
  7. Virginia Tech (1, 1): William & Mary, East Carolina, @Old Dominion, Notre Dame. I really feel like I shouldn’t count Notre Dame for ACC teams at all. Maybe next year.
  8. Wake Forest (1, 1): @Tulane, Towson, Notre Dame, Rice. To continue the thought from above, the rating system says this is a more interesting schedule than Clemson’s. Yes, TAMU isn’t rated as a 1, but again Notre Dame is sorta-kinda-basically in the ACC anyway. Let’s just agree that Clemson should be ranked, say, 6th instead of 9th.
  9. Clemson (0.75, 1): Furman, @Texas A&M, Georgia Southern, South Carolina. Since I used up most of my thoughts about Clemson’s schedule above, let’s take a moment to appreciate the actual road game against a Power-5 opponent. That’s a trend I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing take-off, the good ol’ fashioned home-and-home.
  10. North Carolina State (0.5, 1): James Madison, Georgia State, West Virginia, @Marshall. NC State is looking to be the masters of the state of West Virginia, I guess.
  11. North Carolina (0.25, 1): @California, @East Carolina, Central Florida, Western Carolina. Ah, just a South Carolina away from having all of the Carolinas! Alas. That said, this should rate higher for the road trip out to Berkeley, though I suspect that game won’t be quite as much Culture Shock Central as when Ole Miss visited a few years ago.
  12. Duke (0.25, 1): Army, @Northwestern, @Baylor, North Carolina Central. This is about as bad of a rating as you can get with a schedule that features two Power 5 teams, but UNC edged them out with the road trip to Berkeley and a game with the Defending National Champions.
  13. Boston College (0, 1): Massachusetts, Holy Cross, @Purdue, Temple. Am I saying that with this schedule Purdue is a more interesting matchup than Indiana? Yes. Also, Temple is occasionally spicy, so there’s some credit there too.
  14. Virginia (0, 1.5): Richmond, @Indiana, Ohio, Liberty. Liberty is transitioning to FBS right now, so they count as half-a-FCS team. Other than that, there’s another road game. I guess these ACC schedules are going to be stack with home games in a year or two or something.

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: Prologue

So, as per usual, my brother and I have recently completed the exercise of rating every Power 5 team’s conference schedule for the 2018 season. You can read a general overview of the process here, so I’ll cut straight to the chase.

We rated 73 different teams this year. Non-P5 teams that merited a rating higher than 0 were Defending National Champions Central Florida (0.25), Houston (0.25), South Florida (0.25), and Boise State (0.5). 26 of the 73 teams were rated as 0, 11 as 0.25, 10 as 0.5, just 3 as 0.75, and 23 got a 1.

Those 23 were: Alabama, Auburn, California-Los Angeles, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Louisiana State, Miami, Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Pennsylvania State, Southern California, Stanford, Texas, Texas Christian, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The average rating for all teams was 0.45.

Here are the average ratings for each conference:

  1. Big 12 (0.525)
  2. Pac-12 (0.5)
  3. SEC (0.482)
  4. ACC (0.464)
  5. Big Ten (0.446)

That’s a pretty big shuffle, but a couple of Big 12 teams got promoted to 1’s this year, which likely explains it. At any rate, stay tuned for the actual ratings!

Rating the 2017 Non-Conference Slate: Epilogue

Okay, we’ve gone through each conference, so where does that leave us? Well, first, if you’d like to view them all again, then click here to see all the posts under the “ooc schedules” tag.

Otherwise, we’ve got this part down to a ritual, so let’s get started with the List of Shame, which consists of teams that played more than 1 FCS school. Once again, we have just one member of this club this year: Arkansas, thanks to them playing transitioning FCS-to-FBS team Coastal Carolina.

Ordinarily, this is where I’d put the list of schedules I really like. The problem is this year the only ones that come close are Florida State, Georgia Tech, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. See the problem there? Yeah, they’re all only on there because they have a rivalry game against another team on the list, other than the Gamecocks. I feel like that defeats the purpose of the list. Honestly, while the playoff has given us more marquee out-of-conference games, at the same time conferences like the Big 12, Big Ten, and Pac-12 have gone to nine conference games. While I think that’s great for those conferences, it’s not great for the world of out-of-conference scheduling. That’s basically 36 less out-of-conference games that happen every year, which means a better chance for better schedules. I may need to rethink my criteria for this list, but for now, I’m going to skip it.

Instead, let’s see how the conferences all did a whole. This is an average of an average to account for the differences in the number of games each conference plays.

  1. ACC (0.226)
  2. SEC (0.192)
  3. Big 12 (0.158)
  4. Pac-12 (0.153)
  5. Big Ten (0.151)

Last year the ACC was second on this list, and really it’s more of a case that everyone got worse while the ACC stayed about the same. There’s something to be said for consistency, though, so hopefully the Pac-12 can recover dropping from first to fourth.

And that does it for this year’s preview! Up next, we’ve got the guide for this weekend’s games!

Rating the 2017 Non-Conference Slate: SEC

Do as I did: pour yourself some Bourbon and take some sips of these out-of-conference schedules.

  1. Florida (2 legit, 1 FCS): N-Michigan, Northern Colorado, Alabama-Birmingham, Florida State. Going on the road to play a lesser opponent is something you won’t see the Gators do, that’s for sure, so savor this rare inter-section matchup. Also, this is the first appearance of UAB in our preview, so even though they’re going to get pummelled, let’s give a hearty shout-out to the Blazers: they’re back!
  2. Georgia (1.75, 1): Appalachian State, @Notre Dame, Samford, @Georgia Tech. Georgia’s going to South Bend, eh? Let’s christen that the Unrealistic Expectations Bowl. Oh, wait, does Miami play them this year? Yes they do! Oh, the continuing delicious irony if Richt’s new team betas the Domers and UGA can’t… I actually don’t know if that’s ironic, but it’s something that will make me happy as a GT fan, that’s for sure.
  3. South Carolina (1.25, 1): N-North Carolina State, Louisiana Tech, Wofford, Clemson. Before you get too excited about USC-NCSU, let’s look at the scores from the last three times they played: 7-3, 34-0, and 10-0. Well, we can always hope they’ll lose and beat the Bulldogs they play this year in the most amusing way possible, at least.
  4. Auburn (1, 1): Georgia Southern, @Clemson, Mercer, Lousiana-Monroe. Unfortunately, this isn’t really spicy Georgia Southern anymore, so you mostly have the return trip to Clemson to look forward to. Not that’s a bad thing.
  5. Alabama (1, 1): N-Florida State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Mercer. Well, outside of FSU this doesn’t really do anything for the Tide, but when have they ever needed the boost a good out-of-conference slate can provide?
  6. Texas A&M (1, 1): @California-Los Angeles, Nicholls State, Louisiana-Lafayette, New Mexico. Again, we applaud the inter-sectional matchup, but y’all just got beat out by the returning national champions and a national title favorite for this year. That’s fair, I’d say.
  7. Tennessee (0.75, 1): N-Georgia Tech, Indiana State, Massachusetts, Southern Mississippi. Remember, I ranked Tennessee above Kentucky because Kentucky plays Louisville every year, not because we’re better than Louisville.
  8. Kentucky (0.75, 1): @Southern Mississippi, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Michigan, Louisville.
  9. Arkansas (0.75, 1.5): Florida Agricultural and Mechanical, Texas Christian, New Mexico State, Coastal Carolina. The Chanticleers are moving up to FBS, so Arkansas gets the increasingly rare “half FCS” there. Also thanks to TAMU I had to double check that FAMU was still spelled out in the full name of the school. Oh yeah, they also play TCU which we fully applaud: SWC forever, baby! (Said no one.)
  10. Vanderbilt (0.5, 1): @Middle Tennessee State, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical, Kansas State, Western Kentucky. Alabama A&M also spells it out. Was that so hard, TAMU? Also, @MTSU is only a road game in the technical sense, as Murfeesboro isn’t that far away. Though there’d probably be more Blue Raider fans there either way…
  11. Louisiana State (0, 1): N-Brigham Young, Tennessee-Chattanooga, Syracuse, Troy State. I wasn’t able to watch it last week, but I hope some time during last week’s national broadcast of a UTC game they replayed the clip of Dan Mullen saying “Uuuuu-Teeeee Chattanooga!”
  12. Mississippi (0, 1): South Alabama, Tennessee-Martin, @California, Louisiana-Lafayette. The people watching that weekend in Berkeley might be spectacular, so we’d like to wholly encourage continuing SEC-Pac-12 matchups.
  13. Mississippi State (0, 1): Charleston Southern, @Louisiana Tech, Brigham Young, Massachusetts. Yeah, I don’t think Dan Mullen is going to be able to make Charleston Southern roll off the tongue quite like he did with their FCS opponent last year. Also, going on the road to Ruston? That’s spicy.
  14. Missouri (0, 1): Missouri State, Purdue, Idaho, @Connecticut. There’s bad OOC schedule, and then there’s… this. Oof.

Okay, that’s it! On to the wrap-up!