The Annual Strength of Schedule Column

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Publication Date: January 25, 2005

We Need Bowl Games, Too, and Maybe Tuba Players

Did you hear all the amazed announcers pointing out that more teams than ever in history went undefeated in college football this year? Did you notice that that's because the schools, not being stupid, having noticed that the national champion will almost always be undefeated these days, have stopped scheduling any non-conference opponents more challenging than the company flag football team from Ed's House of Doughnuts and Small Electronic Parts? Wouldn't you love to be a fan of a sport where the best teams have a positive incentive to avoid each other?

This week I take my annual look at schedule issues (although I have some other thoughts brewing and may revisit the topic in a week or two). The full list of intended schedule strength numbers is online; here are the top twenty:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD   Team

  1 117.0  6.3     2 114.8  6.4  Southern California
  2 114.6  8.3    13 111.3  9.4  Arizona
  3 113.8  8.0    17 110.6  8.4  UCLA
  4 113.5  7.6     8 113.3  8.4  Baylor
  5 113.4  6.7     7 113.5  6.2  Cal State Fullerton
  6 113.3  9.2    26 109.3 10.7  Arizona State
  7 113.1  7.5    24 109.8  9.3  Stanford
  8 113.1  6.7    10 112.7  5.8  UC Santa Barbara
  9 112.8  8.4    31 108.7  8.8  Washington
 10 112.6  7.1     9 113.0  5.7  UC Riverside
 11 112.5  8.4    45 106.7  6.9  Oregon State
 12 112.3  7.3    15 111.1  6.7  Long Beach State
 13 112.1 10.8    55 105.4 10.2  California
 14 111.9  7.2    14 111.2  6.6  UC Irvine
 15 111.5  7.3    20 110.2  7.8  Texas A&M
 16 111.5  7.0    19 110.4  5.8  Cal Poly
 17 111.4  4.8    12 112.0  4.7  Hawaii-Hilo
 18 110.9  7.5    41 107.1  6.5  Cal State Northridge
 19 110.5  8.8    71 103.6  7.8  Mississippi
 20 110.4  9.5    39 107.3  9.9  Pacific

Surprising no one, Southern California will once again play the toughest schedule in the nation, and most of the toughest schedules are out West.

The ten toughest non-conference schedules:

 1. Houston
 2. Southern California
 3. San Diego State
 4. Pepperdine
 5. Portland
 6. Nevada-Las Vegas
 7. Cal State Fullerton
 8. Baylor
 9. UC Riverside
10. UC Santa Barbara

As usual, the non-conference series that USC West plays against teams in their conference (cut that out) aren't counted here, so there's is probably the toughest in actuality.

Teams with the highest standard deviation in their opponent strength (who are therefore harder to rate):

 1. Western Illinois
 2. Duke
 3. Maryland
 4. Fresno State
 5. Florida A&M
 6. Oral Roberts
 7. Texas Southern
 8. West Virginia
 9. Kentucky
10. Bethune-Cookman

Of these, Oral Roberts and Fresno State may have some problems due to this.

Finally, the 25 teams most likely to be overrated by the RPI:

 1. Pennsylvania
 2. Dartmouth
 3. St. Peter's
 4. Cornell
 5. Canisius
 6. Lafayette
 7. Long Island
 8. Holy Cross
 9. Yale
10. Vermont
11. Harvard
12. Fairleigh Dickinson
13. St. Francis
14. Columbia
15. Mount St. Mary's
16. Fairfield
17. Manhattan
18. LeMoyne
19. Central Connecticut State
20. Rider
21. Sacred Heart
22. New York Tech
23. Lehigh
24. St. Bonaventure
25. IUPU-Fort Wayne

And the most likely to be underrated:

 1. Baylor
 2. Clemson
 3. Texas A&M
 4. Kansas
 5. Arizona
 6. Hawaii
 7. Rice
 8. Auburn
 9. Georgia
10. Louisiana State
11. Southern California
12. Louisiana Tech
13. Mississippi
14. Texas
15. Florida
16. Houston
17. California
18. Florida State
19. Nevada
20. Stanford
21. Hawaii-Hilo
22. Georgia Tech
23. Arizona State
24. Vanderbilt
25. Alabama

One of the more encouraging things about this list is that, while it's still strangled with good teams from top conferences, it's growing more geographically distributed every year.

More Site Upgrades

I made a couple more additions or improvements over the last week, in case you missed them. The Team Links page has been beefed up so that it now includes separate links for schedules, stats, rosters, and audio links. There's also a new feature where you can calculate the ISR's between any pair of dates from 1997 through (so far) 2004. This lets you do things like those three- and five-year ratings I've done in the past, as well as things like partial season ratings.

If you're interested in reprinting this or any other Boyd's World material for your publication or Web site, please read the reprint policy and contact me

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> The Annual Strength of Schedule Column About the author, Boyd Nation