CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: Cincydawg on August 28, 2018, 09:25:52 AM
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Using preseason appearances:
Michigan (4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 60% on the road)
Texas A&M (#2 Clemson OOC and #1 Bama and #9 Auburn)
Notre Dame
Maryland
Rutgers
Kansas State
LSU (they play 1, 3, 8, and 9, plus 18)
Auburn (they face 1 and 3 on the road, plus 6, @18, and 25, not easy either)
All face 5 ranked opponents. I'm sure I missed some of course.
LSU or Michigan?
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Ours is certainly not the toughest in the country but it's fairly salty. Texas will play 4 ranked opponents: USC, Oklahoma, TCU, and West Virginia. Since the 3 OOC opponents are Maryland, USC, and Tulsa, that means Texas will play 11 P5 teams this year. Not bad. I'm hoping for 8-4 against that schedule, and a win over one or more of those ranked teams would be great.
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Ohio State is also playing 11 P5 teams. That is a credit to scheduling in my book. You never know how good an opponent may be in 6-8 years. I think everyone should play 10.
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https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2758778-ranking-college-footballs-10-hardest-schedules-for-2018 (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2758778-ranking-college-footballs-10-hardest-schedules-for-2018)
Bleacher report's toughest schedules:
1. Nebraska
2. Rutgers
3. Michigan
4. LSU
5. GT
6. UCLA
7. ND
8. Texas A&M
9. FSU
10. Louisville
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Michigan, LSU, aTm and Auburn have a claim.
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Ohio State is also playing 11 P5 teams. That is a credit to scheduling in my book. You never know how good an opponent may be in 6-8 years. I think everyone should play 10.
Purdue also playing 11.
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Nebraska plays only 4 ranked teams and so missed my cut, but that is arbitrary. Akron, Colorado, and Troy are decent OOC games but I don't see that slate overall as being like UM's or LSU's.
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GaTech plays 2, 20, 8, and 3, which again missed my cut.
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WVU also playing 11 P5 opponents. The two P5 OOC games against Tennessee and NC St are both away from home. UT in Charlotte and a true road game in Raleigh.
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GaTech plays 2, 20, 8, and 3, which again missed my cut.
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in the bleacher article they state their rankings include where the game is played as well as sequencing (back to back to back tough games for example). I think there is validity to that approach and thought. Playing 5 citadels should count for something as well. I'd propose a system based only on where teams are ranked preseason (and those rankings are soooo accurate) is incomplete.
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for clarity... I'm not suggesting UNL has the toughest schedule in the country with the bleacher report. I'd pick UM. But, it does highlight other factors that are important in the assessment... imo
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Wisconsin
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for clarity... I'm not suggesting UNL has the toughest schedule in the country with the bleacher report. I'd pick UM. But, it does highlight other factors that are important in the assessment... imo
Yes, I understood you were citing another list, and then explained usefully the other considerations, which indeed are factors.
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I mostly did that for the Iowa fans... so they can follow along. :)
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I would argue that it should be “potentially” toughest schedule since a lot of those pre-season rankings won’t hold up and some unbanked teams (like A&M) could be ranked before the season is over. We should revisit this thread at the end of the season.
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I think this is an awfully difficult question to answer.
Problem #1 is that you need some generally agreed ranking to start from.
Problem #2 is that once you have that generally people start out with saying things like "team x plays five top-25 teams" but that is problematic. Listing off the number of top-25 teams has at least two humongous problems:
- It treats a road game against #1 Bama as being exactly the same as a home game against #25 LSU (or OkSU).
- It treats a road game against the 26th best team in the country (possibly USCe, Florida, or Utah) as being exactly the same as a home game against the worst team in the entire country.
I do not like treating #1 and #25 as equals and I strongly dislike treating #26 and # 120 (whatever we are up to now) as equals. That said, there is some validity to ignoring the difference below some level. If we are arguing SoS among CFP contenders then I would submit that whether you played #96 or #106 is completely irrelevant. OTOH, if we are arguing the SoS of the #101 team then there is a substantial difference between playing #96 on the road or #106 at home. In that case, however, there is little or no difference between playing #6 and playing #16.
Getting into even more complex issues such as the difficulty of playing back-to-back tough games and whatnot just over-complicates the issue.
I also think that the question of "toughest schedule for a ranked team" is more relevant than the generic "toughest schedule" question because I really don't care whether Rutgers has a tougher schedule than Auburn but whether Michigan has a tougher schedule than Auburn might be important by the end of the season. Of course, if we are looking at Michigan/Auburn at the end of the season we'll be working from a completely different set of rankings of their opponents based on their performance rather than their expectations.
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won't really know who had the toughest schedule until the end of the year.
pre-season polls are almost meaningless imo. lots of teams are over-ranked in them to start the season.
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Yup, all this is why the (?) is in the title. I often use a "simple first order approximation" to see how things look in a quick overview and then begin to plug in more variables and considerations.
And yes, at the end of the year, some of these slates won't look that tough and others will.
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So I’d imagine tough ones generally consist of fewer layups plus hopefully one big non-conference and a solid to good league slate.
If the SEC East was better, Missouri would be up there. Wyoming, Purdue and Memphis is secretly super not fun. Then the have the division, plus Bama and Arkansas. A slight dip in team quality and that’ll get you fired.
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Is it tougher to play 4 top ten teams and 8 complete pastries or 12 solid teams in the 20-40 range?
Presume the team in question is a top ten team.
Figure you go 2-2 in the first example and win out to be 10-2.
In the second example, you might get upset once or twice, and be 10.5-1.5 or something (like 3.2 children).
The first LOOKS tougher, but is it?
Presume the rankings are magically correct.
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Is it tougher to play 4 top ten teams and 8 complete pastries or 12 solid teams in the 20-40 range?
Presume the team in question is a top ten team.
Figure you go 2-2 in the first example and win out to be 10-2.
In the second example, you might get upset once or twice, and be 10.5-1.5 or something (like 3.2 children).
The first LOOKS tougher, but is it?
Presume the rankings are magically correct.
I think the sentence that I bolded is the key. For a top-10 team, four top-10's and eight complete patsies is probably tougher because the chances of going 4-0 through four top-10 opponents are almost zero while the chances of going 12-0 through 12 solid opponents are pretty good.
For a solid (20-40) type team the four top-10 teams and eight patsies is definitely an easier schedule because a solid team should go AT LEAST 8-4 against that schedule and they have a decent chance to pick up an upset and go 9-3. However, if they play 12 relative equals they are probably going to end up really close to .500.