Category Archives: OOC schedules

Rating the 2014 Non-Conference Slate: Big Ten

Up next is our survey of the big-boy schools of the Midwest, the Big Ten.

  1. Northwestern (1.25 legit, 1 FCS): California, Northern Illinois, Western Illinois, @Notre Dame. It’s pretty bad when a traditional conference patsy tops the list, but such is the case in the Big Ten this season. It’d be even worse except for the fact Cal has been awful the last couple of seasons, decreasing their appeal in terms of the “legit” rating.
  2. Michigan (1, 0.5): Appalachian State, @Notre Dame, Miami, Utah. Michigan tries to exact revenge for their embarrassment seven years ago. For the record, the Miami here is the one in the MAC.
  3. Michigan State (1, 1): Jacksonville State, @Oregon, Eastern Michigan, Wyoming. One of the premier inter-sectional games of the season has to be Michigan State-Oregon. Looking over this schedule, it’ll be the Big Ten’s only shot at another conference’s power team, and Sparty can improve the entire conference’s chances in the post-season with a win.
  4. Wisconsin (1, 1): N-Louisiana State, Western Illinois, Bowling Green, South Florida. Okay, I guess there’s one other shot, with this neutral site game against LSU. I can’t say I like the Big Ten’s odds in either contest, but I like Sparty’s better.
  5. Nebraska (1, 1): Florida Atlantic, McNeese State, @Fresno State, Miami. In this case, it is that Miami, which I guess also falls under the above category. But hey, too late to change course now. Also, while Nebraska-Miami might actually be a good game, it’s hard to see it affecting the national title race.
  6. Purdue (1, 1): Western Michigan, Central Michigan, N-Notre Dame, Southern Illinois. The battle for Indiana’s soul will happen, somewhat appropriately, in Indianapolis. Provided Indiana’s “soul” doesn’t also include, you know, Indiana.
  7. Ohio State (0.75, 0): N-Navy, Virginia Tech, Kent State, Cincinnati. VPI might give the Buckeyes a run for their money, but even with Braxton Miller they should still be able to outscore the Hokies. Otherwise, this schedule presents no obstacles.
  8. Maryland (0.75, 1): James Madison, @South Florida, West Virginia, @Syracuse. Sometimes, when undergoing drastic changes in your life, you need some stability. Something to keep you grounded. For the Terps, their anchors are apparently West Virginia (a team they’ve met 50 times overall, and in each season going back to 2010) and Syracuse (a team they’ve played 35 times and shared a conference with, albeit briefly).
  9. Iowa (0.5, 1): Northern Iowa, Ball State, Iowa State, @Pittsburgh. So, wait, Iowa can figure out a way to play Pitt but West Virginia can’t? Here are asimsports, we’re still all in favor of traditional rivalry games, but such is the reality of realignment.
  10. Indiana (0.5, 1): Indiana State, @Bowling Green, @Missouri, North Texas. I’d say something about this schedule, but there’s not really much to say other than this is an extremely rare trip by a Big Ten team to a MAC stadium. I’m not kidding, either. Since 1920, the current members of the Big Ten have played the current member of the MAC 292 times, and only in 19 of those contents has the Big Ten team been the visitor. But Indiana is just cool like that, they also did the same favor for UMass in 2012.
  11. Illinois (0.5, 1): Youngstown State, Western Kentucky, @Washington, Texas State. Usually, what the deal is with this is I look over the opponents and try to come up with something interesting. If I can’t think of anything, I then go with something like “the last time [team] played [conference] on the road was in [year]”. Noting the away game in Seattle, I figured I could use that here. Nope. Illinois played Arizona State on the road in 2012.
  12. Minnesota (0.5, 1): Eastern Illinois, Middle Tennessee State, @Texas Christian, San Jose State. This totally slipped past me, I guess because I don’t really care that much, but the Gophers’ old home, the Hubert H. Humphery Metrodome, was demolished earlier this year. Now, Minnesota moved out a couple years ago, but the building was torn down to make way for a new Vikings Stadium. So in the interim, Minnesota will share a stadium with the local NFL club again. As part of the deal, they also got some upgrades to their already mostly new on-campus stadium, most notably a heating system for the field to allow it to be playable late in the NFL season.
  13. Rutgers (0.25, 1): N-Washington State, Howard, Navy, Tulane. Not much to see here, unfortunately.
  14. Pennsylvania State (0, 0): N-Central Florida, Akron, Massachusetts, Temple. Well, on the flip side, all these teams are technically in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Rating the 2014 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First and sporting some pretty beefy schedules, at least the top end, is the ACC.

  1. Florida State (3 legit, 1 FCS): N-Oklahoma State, Citadel, Notre Dame, Florida. This is a pretty strong contender for one of the best schedules in the country. Yes, the meet with the Gators is a rivalry game, but nonetheless there’s two class opponents in Oklahoma State and Notre Dame.
  2. Clemson (2, 1): @Georgia, South Carolina State, Georgia State, South Carolina. Clemson visits Athens for the second part of their series. The 38-35 win last year set the tone for the Tigers’ season, riding a 6 game winning streak until getting dismantled by FSU.
  3. Miami (1.25, 1): Florida Agricultural and Mechanical, Arkansas State, @Nebraska, Cincinnati. Miami-Nebraska is the best kind of non-conference game, the intersectional meeting between two teams who don’t play each other often. Their last meeting the 2002 Rose Bowl, which the ‘Canes won easily. As national powers in the 80’s and 90’s, they met in four different Orange Bowls, with Miami winning three. The last regular season meeting was in 1976. As for the rest of the schedule, it’s pretty standard, though there is that throw-in with former Big East foe Cincinnati.
  4. Virginia Tech (1, 1): William & Mary, @Ohio State, East Carolina, Western Michigan. VPI finds itself playing a potential national title contender again, but I’ll give them kudos for scheduling those kinds of games at least.
  5. North Carolina (1, 1): Liberty, San Diego State, @East Carolina, @Notre Dame. I saved it for this one, but East Carolina is a bit of a trendy pick to be a really good non-power conference team this season, and definitely the sort of team that could make this year’s UNC team like every other year’s UNC team: overrated. There’s also a game at South Bend for good measure.
  6. Boston College (1, 1): @Massachusetts, Southern California, Maine, Colorado State. BC will play UMass in a huge NFL stadium and then play Southern Cal in their much cozier home. (UMass, for their part, will be re-opening their on-campus stadium a few weeks later.)
  7. Virginia (1, 1): California-Los Angeles, Richmond, @Brigham Young, Kent State. Somehow I doubt Virginia will have the same luck against BYU this year as they did last year. Then again, they may need luck just to get past Richmond and Kent State.
  8. Syracuse (1, 1): Villanova, @Central Michigan, Maryland, N-Notre Dame. The ‘Cuse already managed to get former ACC member Maryland on the schedule, which is somewhat impressive. The neutral site for the Notre Dame game is MetLife Stadium. I’m going to guess there’ll be a lot of blue and gold in the stands that day.
  9. Louisville (1, 1): Murray State, @Florida International, @Notre Dame, Kentucky. I know that Notre Dame has a “scheduling agreement” with the ACC now, but geez. This schedule also goes near the bottom for a “wtf?” road game at FIU and the fact that I tend to discount yearly rivalry games a bit.
  10. Georgia Tech (1, 1.5): Wofford, @Tulane, Georgia Southern, @Georgia. Our road game at Tulane, meanwhile, is to open up the return of football at Tulane for the first time since 1975. Other than that, there’s not much else to recommend this schedule. The half-FCS point is for Georgia Southern, which is a transitional team this year.
  11. Pittsburgh (0.5, 1): Delaware, @Florida International, Iowa, Akron. FIU managed to score eight home games this year, which is really good for a team like them. That’s probably one way to line up your 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 deals, but if I were a mid-major AD I’d probably shoot for spreading the wealth a little bit, you know?
  12. Duke (0, 1): Elon, @Troy, Kansas, Tulane. Speaking of called in return games, Duke will venture to Troy. We’ll quickly get an idea if the Blue Devils are working their magic again this year, it seems.
  13. Wake Forest (0, 1): @Louisiana-Monroe, Gardner-Webb, @Utah State, Army. Okay, what the heck? Is the ACC going on on a barnstorming tour this year?
  14. North Carolina State (0, 2): Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, @South Florida, Presbyterian. This might be one of the worst schedules in the country, with two transitional teams, an additional full FCS team for good measure, oh yeah, and then a road game.

So pretty good at the top, but pretty atrocious at the bottom. What do the other conferences have in store for us? Tune in next time for the Big Ten.

Rating the 2014 Non-Conference Slate: Prologue

It’s that time again! We’re less than a week away from the start of the season, so let’s kick it off with our annual take on pre-season previews: a ranking of every major team’s out-of-conference schedule.

Continuing from last year, we are now only ranking the “Power 5” conferences: the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC. The only non-Power 5 teams with ratings were Cincinnati (0.25), Notre Dame (1), BYU (0.25), and Boise State (0.5).

What’s that rating, you ask? That’s our basically subjective “legit” appeal rating, essentially we’re trying to capture how excited a theoretical school might be about playing another school. The rating is a number between 0 and 1, with increments in 0.25.

Last year we gave out a stingy 15 “1” ratings. We apparently felt more generous this time around and gave out 22 “1” ratings. The following schools received a “1”: Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Oregon, Stanford, Southern California, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana State, South Carolina, and Texas Agricultural and Mechanical. For those scoring at home, that’s 3 for the ACC, 4 for the Big 12, 4 for the Big Ten, 3 for the Pac-12, and 7 for the SEC.

Given that, the average rating for each conference probably won’t be a huge surprise:

  1. SEC (0.661)
  2. Big 12 (0.639)
  3. Pac-12 (0.521)
  4. Big Ten (0.464)
  5. ACC (0.482)

 So that’s that. Next up: the ACC.

Rating the 2013 Non-Conference Slate: Epilogue

Templates!

The Shame List (teams that play more than 1 FCS and/or transitional team): Clemson, Georgia Tech, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma State, West Virginia.

The Praise List (teams that play zero FCS or transitional teams): California-Los Angeles, Stanford, Southern California, Oklahoma, Michigan.

Overall worst schedules! (Somewhat subjective!)

  1. Dishonorable mention: a full half of the Big 12. Between Kansas, Kansas State, Texas Tech, Baylor, and West Virginia maybe the only interesting game is West Virginia-Maryland.
  2. Baylor (0, 1): Wofford, Buffalo, Louisiana-Monroe. Gertrude Stein once wrote “there is no there there”. She was talking about Oakland but I think this works for Baylor’s out-of-conference schedule as well. Also I know they got an honorable mention above, but still.
  3. Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (0, 1): Rice, Sam Houston State, Southern Methodist, Texas-El Paso. Well, I guess no one can accuse them of ducking smaller in-state schools.
  4. Arizona (0, 1.5): Northern Arizona, @Nevada-Las Vegas, Texas-San Antonio. I think this pretty much speaks for itself, yeah?

Best schedules!

Honestly, I can’t really bring myself to do a countdown list here, because these top-rated schedules has certain flaws. Let’s break them down.

  • Clemson (2, 2): Georgia, South Carolina State, Citadel, @South Carolina. Both of their marquee games should be must-watch events, and as mentioned previously seeing an old rivalry played again is always good. But I generally don’t give extra kudos for playing an in-state rival you play every year (though in light of other previously annual rivalries biting the dust with realignment, maybe that is worthy of acknowledgment). Also, a schedule that has two FCS teams simply can’t be called great.
  • Arizona State (1.75, 1): Sacramento State, Wisconsin, N-Notre Dame. If I did do a ranking, this would probably be tops, but didn’t feel right for some reason.
  • Florida (1.75, 1): Toledo, @Miami, Georgia Southern, Florida State. Not bad, and fits several of the criteria I’ve talked about, and has an acceptable one FCS team. Still, it would’ve tough to put this over Arizona State because I like to reward inter-sectional matchups.
  • No team in the Big 12 earned more than 1 “legit” point. Oklahoma’s game at Notre Dame got them the top spot, but still, Arizona State plays two auto-qualifying taems.
  • The Big Ten was pretty bleak as well. A lot of these teams play Notre Dame every year. While that is being threatened by Notre Dame’s new scheduling alliance with the ACC, it’s still the status quo for now.

For, for now, let’s close with each conferences’ schedules ranked by their “legit averages”. (E.g., not the average of each conference’s rating as presented in the first post, but the average of all their members’ legit averages.)

  1. Pac-12 (0.201)
  2. ACC (0.192)
  3. SEC (0.164)
  4. Big Ten (0.141)
  5. Big 12 (0.1)

And that’s all. Reminder, the season starts tomorrow. Look for the usual post.

    Rating the 2013 Non-Conference Slate: SEC

    The SEC conspicuously avoids having a number in their name, but that despite that people will say they can’t count because hey, it’s the South, am I right?*

    1.  Florida (1.75 legit, 1 FCS): Toledo, @Miami, Georgia Southern, Florida State. Florida and Florida State play every year, but I suspect there are still some out there surprised to find out that Florida and Miami don’t. So that’s net in and of itself.
    2. Georgia (1.5, 1): @Clemson, North Texas, Appalachian State, @Georgia Tech. Georgia-Clemson is probably the single most intriguing out-of-conference matchup for the entire SEC and maybe the whole of college football this year. They’re rivals (Google Maps says “Athens, GA to Clemson, SC” is just 79 miles) that don’t play all the time. While they’re both top programs in their leagues, they’re often overshadowed by more successful/well-known teams (Alabama, Florida State). They both generally come into seasons with huge expectations and then fail to capitalize (Georgia is expected to win the SEC East and go to the BCS with a darkhorse national title run a possibility, while Clemson is supposed to win the ACC). The general SEC dominance narrative is countered what was likely last year’s most exciting bowl game, Clemson’s 25-24 win over LSU in the Chick-fil-a Bowl. (More parentheticals: I was channel surfing the other week and saw the beginning of that game again. Goodness, it sured looked like it was going to be a LSU blowout after the first 5 minutes right?)
    3. South Carolina (1.25, 1): North Carolina, @Central Florida, Coastal Carolina, Clemson. South Carolina also plays Clemson, but, well, they do that every year.
    4. Tennessee (1, 1): Austin Peay, Western Kentucky, @Oregon, South Alabama. When I was doing research for the Oregon write-up in the Pac-12 post, I came across this: Operation Rocky Top. The second sentence in the article contains the phrase “illegal activities in charity bingo”. That just seems sort of quaint, doesn’t it? But that’s how political scandals used to roll in the South in the 80’s and 90’s. (Of course, the results are decidedly unfunny (see the article).)
    5. Mississippi (1, 1): Southeast Missouri State, @Texas, Idaho, Troy. Well, that is Texas on that schedule. Will the cachet of playing the Longhorns be back this season?
    6. Mississippi State (0.75, 1): N-Oklahoma State, Alcorn State, Troy, Bowling Green. Protip: this SEC-Big 12 matchup will likely be far more interesting than Ole Miss-Texas.
    7. Alabama (0.75, 1.5): N-Virginia Tech, Colorado State, Georgia State, Tennessee-Chattanooga. This is the SEC-ACC matchup that’s getting more attention going into the start of the season, but I’m not sure why. VPI isn’t what it used to be, but Alabama should the same terrifying college football robot they’ve been the past few years. Meanwhile, in a brazen display of originality following a name change, Chattanooga is the “Mocs” after probably having to change from “Moccasins”.
    8. Louisiana State (0.5, 1): N-Texas Christian, Alabama-Birmingham, Kent State, Furman. LSU-TCU is probably a tad underrated, but we’ll also get to see how “for real” TCU is as a Big 12 program as a result as well.
    9. Kentucky (0.5, 1): N-Western Kentucky, Miami, Louisville, Alabama State. Hint: it’s Rust Belt Miami. Also that WKU game is in Nashville, which makes me wonder if there are really any truly Tennessee cities. I generally tend to think Memphis as an extension of Mississippi, and if Georgia gets an extremely unlikely series of legal decisions to go their way, Chattanooga might as well be in Georgia. Nashville is now hosting neutral site games between two schools in Kentucky, so that pretty much leaves Knoxville I guess?
    10. Auburn (0.25, 1): Washington State, Arkansas State, Western Carolina, Florida Atlantic. I’m not sure what else to say about the Auburn-Wazzou game other than that it could be the best worst college football game of the year.
    11. Arkansas (0, 1): Louisiana-Lafayette, Samford, Southern Mississippi, @Rutgers. I’m trying very hard to come up with something funny to say about Arkansas-Rutgers, but it’s not happening. I still have a while before the game comes up for “This Weekend in College Football”, thankfully.
    12. Vanderbilt (0, 1): Austin Peay, @Massachusetts, Alabama-Birmingham, Wake Forest. Vanderbilt is on the up-and-up, but with this series of OOC games it only need a .500 conference mark to get 8 wins again, so keep that in mind.
    13. Missouri (0, 1): Murray State, Toledo, @Indiana, Arkansas State. This schedule is a non-entity. It is an un-schedule. It is bad when a schedule can be improved by adding Kansas to it.
    14. Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (0, 1): Rice, Sam Houston State, Southern Methodist, Texas-El Paso. Which makes this one somehow even worse. This is the SEC school I want to see Texas play, not Ole Miss.

    We’ll do a wrap-up after this, just in the nick of time. Stay tuned!

      *: Reminder that every time I do math wrong on here or have horrendous spelling and/or grammar issues that my entire K-12 education was a product of the State of Alabama.