Cupcakes and Gauntlets: Examining Strength Of Schedule in College Football

"ALABAMA AIN'T PLAYED NOBODY PAWLLLLLL"

One of the interesting aspects of college football is how two teams can finish with the same record, but be vastly different in terms of overall ability because they played two completely different schedules. With 133 FBS scheduling each other and numerous FCS teams, relying solely on record leaves out the context of their quality of opponent. That is where strength of schedule comes into play. Strength of schedule can give us that needed context into how easy/difficult a team’s opponents were during a regular season, and it can help us project the road ahead in the upcoming season. For this article, we are going to focus on the strength of schedule of teams heading into a season in the CFP era (2015-2022).

Calculating a team’s strength of schedule can be as easy as taking their opponents team record from the previous season and adding them together. The issue with using team records are 1. You run into the problem outlined earlier as those records don’t take into account quality of opponent, and 2. Coaches and player changes can make a team look completely different from the previous year. With that in mind, we will use something that DOES take both of those into account: Sportsbook win totals.

If you aren’t into betting, sports books will release a regular season win total for each CFB team, and you can bet whether that team will go over or under that win total. While you normally can’t bet that much on these type of bets, they do give us an idea of what oddsmakers think of a team’s road ahead. Using win totals, we are going to do something called Bayesian Bootstrapping (Basically resampling the data over and over again and taking the averages from those samples) that allows us to obtain a team’s opponents average preseason win total while accounting for a little uncertainty. It should also be noted that FCS teams on the schedule were given a win total of 1, which represents the lowest win total in the dataset. With that being said, let’s dive into it!

Average Team Win Totals

First up, we can look at a teams average win total heading into a season. For the entirety of the college football playoff era, we can see that Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson have been the top dogs. While Georgia has surely passed all three of them, they started the playoff era with win totals in the 8.5 to 9 win range. Boise State started the playoff era as the G5 team to beat, but their less than elite results on the field have paved the way for other group of 5 teams (UCF, Cincinnati etc.) to take that coveted NY6 bowl spot.

Average Strength Of Schedule

Based on both out of conference and conference opponents, this is how an average preseason strength of schedule has looked in the CFB playoff era. At the top rests Georgia Tech, who have struggled to find footing in their post Paul Johnson era. The Yellow Jackets have gone 14-32 since 2019, largely in part due to having difficult schedules. While the ACC isn’t the toughest conference in the P5, a mixture of ACC teams with high expectations (UNC/Miami/FSU etc.), hard out of conference opponents (Notre Dame/Tennessee/Ole Miss/UCF etc.) and then oh, Georgia and Clemson every season is a gauntlet for a team like Georgia Tech.

Some notable teams near the top are schools like Georgia Tech, Stanford, South Carolina and Arkansas, who are continually asked to punch above their weight classes each and every season. While their levels of commitment are all vastly different, it can be tough to produce bowl eligible teams year in and year out. The coaches at LSU and Auburn are expected to compete for national titles while having to handle the difficult SEC while also playing OOC teams like FSU and Oregon.

Tier 4 and Tier 5 are made up of teams that competed in the group of 5 during this time span. While we still love our beloved group of 5, the division between them and the power 5 is easy to see on this graph. Now that we have looked at strength of schedule with the entire schedule, we can chop it up between conference and out of conference to see what is driving a teams strength of schedule.

Top 25 Hardest Conference Schedules

These are the top 25 hardest average conference schedules, with ranges included. The first nine spots are occupied by teams from the SEC, with the previously mentioned Arkansas Razorbacks on top. Maryland saw its most successful season in terms of wins in the playoff era in 2022, going 8-5 (includes bowl win). Consistently going against Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State can quickly get you four losses on the schedule.

Conference + Out of Conference SOS

Expanding past the top 25 hardest conference schedules and throwing in out of conference, we can get the full picture on where the difficulty comes from in a certain teams schedule. USC is now the only FBS team that has never scheduled a FCS team in their out of conference, which is part of the reason why they are so high on the OOC strength of schedule. Other reasons include facing Notre Dame every year, scheduling teams like Texas, BYU and of course Alabama, and catching teams at the wrong moment, like Western Michigan the year after their 13-1 New Year’s Six bowl appearance.

The top left and bottom right quadrants are the most interesting sections of this graph. While teams don’t have much leeway on their conference schedules, they can control their out of conference schedules. You can see SEC teams that counteract their hard conference schedules with softer out of conference schedules. On the other side, teams like Louisiana Monroe or Arkansas State have softer conference schedules, but have to schedule the upper echelon teams in CFB in order to get those guaranteed pay days.

2023 Projected Strength Of Schedule

Finally, while we don’t have win totals for 2023 just yet, we can get a first look at the 2023 strength of schedules using the average win totals we got earlier. Purdue and West Virginia lead the way partially due to their out of conference schedules. While neither play any of the top projected teams out of conference, they aren’t exactly going against cupcakes. Purdue faces Fresno State, Virginia Tech and Syracuse OOC to go along with Ohio State and Michigan in conference. West Virginia plays Penn State and Pittsburgh out of conference before taking on their conference slate.

One caveat of West Virginia and the rest of the Big 12 on this listing is the average win totals of UCF, Cincinnati and Houston are all from their time in the AAC. Nevertheless, it gives us something to look at before sportsbooks begin rolling out win totals for all FBS teams.

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