Non-Conference Strength of Schedule for 2014 (All 124 FBS teams)

I was going to say no until I read the last half of your last sentence. We (and other) SEC teams have weak OOC schedules because our conference schedules are tougher than most teams in other conferences. As long as we win games, we don't need the OOC boost to get us in the playoffs. But in my opinion, if we don't win the conference, we absolutely need to be able to point to some quality OOC wins.

BamaFanatJSU said:

An SB-Nation article from yesterday outlines the non-conference strength of schedule due up for all of the 124 FBS teams in 2014.

Click here

Despite the early season tilt with WVU, our non-conference strength of schedule (Florida Atlantic, Southern Miss, Western Carolina) ranks as the 9th weakest out of the entire FBS. While there are three other SEC teams accompanying us in the bottom 10, do any of you believe the playoff selection committee might use this against us if, say, we end 2014 with only one loss but somehow don't win the SEC (as in 2011)?

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This is a ridiculous ranking!

What other teams play 8 TOUGH SEC teams? Not anyone outside the SEC!

So WVU + the SEC teams should rank in the top 5 to top 20 in Strength of Schedule. Anyone who ranks us #9 in weakest schedule is very BIASED and doesn't know anything about college football!

BamaFanatJSU said:

The #9 weakest schedule ranking is for our out-of-conference games, not our SEC slate.

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But our TOUGH SEC schedule makes up for those other teams we play.

10 best AQ non-conference schedules

1. Texas: North Texas, BYU, UCLA
2. Iowa State: North Dakota State, at Iowa, Toledo
3. West Virginia: Alabama, Towson, at Maryland
4. USC: Fresno State, at Boston College, Notre Dame
5. Missouri: South Dakota State, at Toledo, UCF, Indiana
6. Oklahoma State: Florida State, Missouri State, UTSA
7. Florida State: Oklahoma State, The Citadel, Notre Dame, Florida
8. North Carolina: Liberty, San Diego State, at East Carolina, at Notre Dame
9. Minnesota: Eastern Illinois, Middle Tennessee, at TCU, San Jose State
10. Ohio State: Navy, Virginia Tech, Kent State, Cincinnati

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I could poke holes at these all day long. I'm more impressed with F$U OOC schedule than Texas. Oklahoma State, The Citadel, Notre Dame & Florida > North Texas, BYU & UCLA.

Al A Bama said:

But our TOUGH SEC schedule makes up for those other teams we play.

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The ranking is for OOC only. Everyone knows the SEC schedule is the hardest and makes up for it in many ways. I think it depends on how dominant we are against our OOC and SEC teams for us to make the play-off if we were to lose 1 game. I think we make it with 1 loss regardless but OOC could be a factor.

bamagradinATL said:

I could poke holes at these all day long. I'm more impressed with F$U OOC schedule than Texas. Oklahoma State, The Citadel, Notre Dame & Florida > North Texas, BYU & UCLA.

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maybe the ranking is also based on how good the team is?

Strength of schedule is meaningless in the pre-season. We have no idea how good teams are going to be. WVU was pretty bad last year but that does not mean they will be next year. Strength of schedule should be determined until about week 5 or 6. This is inda like preseason polls. Useless at this point.

Listening to ESPN, I think it's fair to say that everyone knows most SEC teams have weak OOC schedules, but don't blame us because of the strength of our conference. It is teams like Ohio St or FSU that need to worry about better OOC opponents because their conferences are a joke.

I don't think SEC teams need to play top 10 or even top 20 OOC schedules given the rigors of SEC play, but schools like Florida and Bama have no business being in the bottom 10 of a ranking like this one. Bama could easily beef this up a little without over-taxing itself. That said, 2014 schedules were made with the BCS in mind, which did not penalize a team for weak OOC play. Hopefully the new playoff will factor in SOS and force teams to play tougher schedules. I think if that happens Saban will gladly improve his OOC slate.

USCBAMA said:

I don't think SEC teams need to play top 10 or even top 20 OOC schedules given the rigors of SEC play, but schools like Florida and Bama have no business being in the bottom 10 of a ranking like this one. Bama could easily beef this up a little without over-taxing itself. That said, 2014 schedules were made with the BCS in mind, which did not penalize a team for weak OOC play. Hopefully the new playoff will factor in SOS and force teams to play tougher schedules. I think if that happens Saban will gladly improve his OOC slate.

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I agree with this - especially the bold part - but the problem is that one year a team like USM looks like world-beaters and the next year they're garbage. Hard to figure that out.

CrimsonProf said:

I agree with this - especially the bold part - but the problem is that one year a team like USM looks like world-beaters and the next year they're garbage. Hard to figure that out.

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Ala: Larry Fedora going 11-1 in one season, and Ellis Johnson going 0-12 after Fedora left.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

WV is gonna be better this year than alotta people think so..

CrimsonProf said:

I agree with this - especially the bold part - but the problem is that one year a team like USM looks like world-beaters and the next year they're garbage. Hard to figure that out.

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Agree, but at least trade either Florida Atlantic or western carolina for a mid level team, maybe someone like East Carolina or Indiana.

Yeah you could definitely poke holes in this silly ranking.

Iowa State-North Dakota State, at Iowa, Toledo. at number 2 is ridiculous.

You could take about 15-17 out of the top 20 and pick them out of a hat and not get one any harder than the next.

Like rolltide_21 said, its meaningless now. 4 games in next season, this will look nothing like it is now.

You can tell its the off season.

bamagradinATL said:

I could poke holes at these all day long. I'm more impressed with F$U OOC schedule than Texas. Oklahoma State, The Citadel, Notre Dame & Florida > North Texas, BYU & UCLA.

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Yeah. FSU should be toughest no doubt. Is UCLA so much better than West Virginia?

Two points:

(1) Yes it is certainly true that we will have a weak non-conference schedule unless West Virginia really takes off. If WVU finishes up 4-8 again next season -- or does anything reasonably close to that -- then we should essentially be able to get through non-conference play without breaking a sweat.

(2) That notwithstanding, this ranking is a joke and it's so far off in so many material aspects that it's not even really worth going through them all. No one should even give this nonsense the reward of the traffic by clicking the link.

CrimsonChuck said:

Yeah. FSU should be toughest no doubt. Is UCLA so much better than West Virginia?

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In a nutshell, yes. West Virginia went 4-8 last season, and were an absolute trainwreck outside of a still mind-boggling upset of Oklahoma State. Holgorsen, in fact, would have gotten fired for that year at many better programs, and probably won't survive 2014 without a big upswing.

UCLA, on the other hand, went 10-3, won a bowl game, and all three losses came to top 20 teams.

Now I do think people that are hopping on that bandwagon as UCLA being legitimate national championship contenders are far off base, so I would take that in context. Yes they do have Hundley back -- who, frankly, the jury is still out on in my book -- and may be slightly better than a year ago, but that's still a team with not a ton of quality depth, fairly questionable coaching, and they were a long way behind Oregon and Stanford a year ago (combined margin of defeat was 45 points against those two). I'll still put them in the good-but-not-great-until-proven-otherwise category.

Here's a hint. You can't do SoS before the season starts.

If someone thinks they can, well that calls everything else they think into question as well.