In the spring I did blogs on the which teams faced the toughest and easiest schedules in each conference. Now I am a guy that follows nothing all year but College Football. No NBA, no college basketball, no baseball, no soccer. I barely even follow the NFL. COLLEGE Football. I realize most of you follow other sports so you may have missed this series of blogs I put up in March. Washington draws the toughest schedule of the Big Ten and they are actually #43 in my Power Poll (talent wise) but not ranked in my preseason Top 60 because of the schedule. Here is the blog I posted in March.
Last year Oklahoma St was not the second best team in the Big 12 but had the best schedule and they landed in the Big 12 title game. With the Power Four conferences going to as many as 18 team leagues, who you play and who you miss is even more important.
Today I will start with the Big Ten Conference. The Big Ten plays a 9 game schedule which means some teams have five home games and four conference road games while the other half has only four home games and five Big Ten road games.
The fortunate teams with 5 home games are Ohio St, Michigan, Oregon, Penn St, Maryland, Michigan St, Indiana, Rutgers and UCLA.
The next category to look at is conference records from last year. Luckily both the Pac 12 and Big 10 played 9 conference games so the numbers were even for the leagues and each teams foes added up to 81 games. Normally when I do this I can add up the wins and the losses and they should equal. The totals add up to 805-656 so you may think I did the math wrong but keep in mind the Big Ten had equal wins and losses for conference play but the four Pac 12 teams brought over had records of 9-0, 8-1, 5-4 and 4-5 so a combined 26-10! This means by bringing over most of the top teams the Pac 12 will have much higher conference records than when we get to the Big 12 which will likely have a losing record overall for its opponents this year.
In this category Washington and Northwestern play teams that were 49-32 last year and Four teams in Minnesota, USC, Oregon, and Indiana have foes that were 47-34 in conference play last year. Only one team plays foes that had a combined losing record last year and that is Rutgers whose foes were 38-43 in conference play last year for 46.9%.
The above category has some flaws. For example, Washington last year was 9-0 and in the national title game. This year due to the coaching change and graduation have just a shell of the team returning and lose their head coach.
I have the chart color coded. Now, you may disagree with my ratings, but I have all my preliminary numbers done as the portal is closed and almost all good players have signed that were out there. I have put the teams in three colors.
The top level of teams are the super powers. I list those teams in RED for you do not want to play them. That top level category in no particular order is Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St, Oregon and Iowa.
The next level is in Blue and they are teams that look like bowl teams or bowl caliber teams for this year.
The bottom level is Green for teams that you want to draw. It may surprise you that I have a Northwestern team down there that was 8-5 last year and beat Utah in the bowl. Keep in mind they were an underdog in 10 games last year and are a tough school to upgrade talent thru the portal. I will give them a little fuel for the fire by listing them here.
Three teams draw 4 of the top 5 teams and they are Washington, Mich St and Ohio State. Only one team draws all 4 green teams and that is Ohio St. Look at Rutgers schedule as they are the only team in the Big Ten that does not face Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St, Oregon or Iowa.
Here is the chart and here is how I grade this year’s CONFERENCE schedules, keep in mind non-conference games are not included in this particular strength of schedule.
This year’s Phil Steele College Football Preview is 352 pages and we went to the press later than usual on June 7th so we were able to capture all the transfer portal moves (transfer portal closed April 30). It has the most up to date rosters, three to four times the amount of information of any other College Football Preview. Don’t waste your gas driving around looking for the magazine, it is EXCLUSIVELY at Barnes and Nobles and Books-a-Million this year. You can also order online at PhilSteele.com and when you order on line you get the hard copy but also the digital copy for FREE and the digital copy is updated thru September. Check back every day for a new blog right here.
