Link: Billingsley’s Top 50 most difficult schedules in College Football history

While there's obviously some subjectivity and I'd assume some factors that weigh in favor of playing more games, I think this does illustrate just how difficult the 2015 season was.

The 2015 Alabama season is as far ahead of #2 as #2 is from #8. I'm going to go with my new shtick and say clearly this calls for dropping the FCS game and adding another conference game.

Thanks for posting. The team sure earned every bit of its championship title last season. The SEC is well-represented at the top of that list.

The 1978 team didn't make the list?


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Obviously the playoff plays a big factor in this ranking because the finals participants will play two more quality opponents. Look at 2014 Ohio State making the top 15 all-time when the bulk of their schedule strength came in the B10CG, semis, and final. Conference title games didn't exist until 1992; 4-team playoffs didn't exist until 2014. Also, teams are actually playing tougher schedules on average than even 20 or 30 years ago. There are very few teams on that list from before the 1990s. The money flow into the sport with the advent of cable has really strengthened all the conferences competitively speaking but the SEC takes the cake since it sits on the best talent bed in the nation.


At either rate, 2015 was one of the strongest title runs...it was fun to see this team grow.

KrAzY3 said:

The 2015 Alabama season is as far ahead of #2 as #2 is from #8. I'm going to go with my new shtick and say clearly this calls for dropping the FCS game and adding another conference game.

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Great, you are finally seeing the light. Welcome to the club.:biggrin: I knew you would come around.

Note one glaring team missing from this - the media favorite Notre Dame.

Thanks, this is an interesting list. I wouldn't disagree with any of the picks but I would have never guessed the 1970 team would be on the list. We had back to back 6-5 years and Coach Bryant installed the wishbone and we all know what happened.

It's about toughest schedules, not about best teams...

TiderMan said:

Great, you are finally seeing the light. Welcome to the club.:biggrin: I knew you would come around.

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And the gap between Bama and num 2 is greater than between num 3 and 28.

I meant this as a reply to Krazy's post.

rgw said:

Obviously the playoff plays a big factor in this ranking because the finals participants will play two more quality opponents. Look at 2014 Ohio State making the top 15 all-time when the bulk of their schedule strength came in the B10CG, semis, and final. Conference title games didn't exist until 1992; 4-team playoffs didn't exist until 2014. Also, teams are actually playing tougher schedules on average than even 20 or 30 years ago. There are very few teams on that list from before the 1990s. The money flow into the sport with the advent of cable has really strengthened all the conferences competitively speaking but the SEC takes the cake since it sits on the best talent bed in the nation.


At either rate, 2015 was one of the strongest title runs...it was fun to see this team grow.

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I only alluded to it as "subjectivity" in my first post but yes I would agree that there seems to be bias in favor of the number of games played. Logically, it makes sense that playing 15 games it more difficult than 14 in most instances, and of course the additional difficult games should move a given SoS up, but here it seems to just give a higher value on the additional game, period. I've argued against that before, it makes comparing schedules all but impossible. A proper SoS calculation, in my opinion allows for comparing a 12 game schedule to a 15 game schedule such as Alabama's 1978 schedule vs. Alabama's 2015 schedule without simply weighing the calculation in favor or the team that played more games. So, yes that bias seems to be there.

Another thing worth noting, is only a single team on that list was undefeated. Now, I do think that strengthens the argument that the more difficult a schedule is, the less likely going undefeated is but I also think it might be skewed a bit in that regard as well. For instance, there's no teams from 2009, but Alabama went undefeated that year, played 14 games and had the #2 SoS according to Sagarin, seems like that would put the team in contention for the list. Going undefeated ironically might have weakened their chance of making the list, as 2008 Florida does make an appearance very high on the list (the team beating them would get a bump in their ranking thus making the game more difficult, seems the bump might be excessive). 2007, 2008, 2010-2015 all make appearances on the list so 2009 is a noticeable omission.

Having said that, it still does paint a clear picture. With the additional games, the modern SEC teams are facing a real gauntlet.

2009 is probably marred by a lot of teams flopping on expectations on the schedule. South Carolina came into our game as a top-20 team, finished the season 7-6. VT, LSU, and Ole Miss were the only regular season opponents to really make any sort of impact.

4Q Basket Case said:

The thing that surprised me is how well the teams did against the tough schedules. Lots of double-digit wins, and not too many losing or mediocre seasons.

As I thought about it, though, it made some sense. If you're a good team, you have a good chance of playing in a conference championship game, usually against another good team. Even if you're not in a playoff or the BCS, you're probably in a good bowl against yet another good team.

Those two games at the end of the year against good teams would have a big impact on the SOS.

So it's a bit counterintuitive that teams with the hardest schedules tend to have better records, but if you think about how those schedules might have gotten so strong, it does make some sense.

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The list is biased in favor of big or in the least number of games and it would appear a bit against undefeated teams. So it seems to favor something in the middle, as you can see there's plenty of 1 and 2 loss teams and only one undefeated team. One reason I stick with Sagarin, other rankings and lists are interesting but if you dig into the numbers too much you often find some bias (even Sagarin is prone to a kind of locked in SoS which can make almost every team in a conference end up ranked very highly).

But yeah I think you summed it up. More likely to play quality post season games, so more conference championship games, good bowl games, BCS championship game, and playoff games. Since the list seems to overly reward the additional games, a lot of teams that did those things ended up there.

That 2011 LSU schedule was sick.

Mystical said:

That 2011 LSU schedule was sick.

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They beat 3 BCS bowl winners and the Cotton Bowl winner (Arkansas). Probably the best team to not win a title since 2002 Miami.

Mystical said:

That 2011 LSU schedule was sick.

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rgw said:

They beat 3 BCS bowl winners and the Cotton Bowl winner (Arkansas). Probably the best team to not win a title since 2002 Miami.

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I think that the 2011 LSU team would likely be considered the best college football team of all time if they had managed to beat Alabama a second time.

Saw an article where Billingsley also has moved Bama to the #1 program of all time. I won't link the article, because it has trashy talk in the comments section, but according to their metrics, Bama is #1 all time.