Welcome back, college sports fans, as we are just about to begin our preseason conference countdown for the 2026/27 season. This will be the first of 26 preseason strength-of-schedule (PS-SOS) posts that will begin with the conference the GCR algorithm estimates has the easiest collective schedule this season. The approach we used is in the next paragraph. The least challenged of the 25 (including FCS and FBS independents as their own respective conferences) will be posted tomorrow, July 9th, and the most challenged will be posted on August 24th. Following that post, we will have just three short days until the FCS begins action on the 27th (Thursday) with the FBS kicking off Week 0 on August 29th (Saturday). All told it will be 29 (or maybe 30) posts in the next 52 days as we gear up for the season.
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As of right now, all 266 teams have identical 0-0 records with a 0.000 SOS – thus every team is tied for first, from Indiana (last year’s FBS champion) to Chicago St (preparing to play their first football game ever). So, if every team is tied, how can the GCR cover PS-SOS and compare conferences/teams? We do it by using 2025 GCR calculations. We take the 264 teams that were D1 (FBS or FCS) last season that are also D1 this season and used their final Score as the value in the 2026 schedule. Note: St Francis is dropping from D1 to D3 this season. For Chicago St, the value we used was just 0.000 because we have no other logical number to use. For example, we can’t just use the average FCS Score because there is no data to support the Cougars will be average. For New Haven, who jumped from D2 to D1, we used the same math for non-D1 opponents which is a given value derived as a percentage of the mean FCS Score adjusted based on the 2025 record of the opponent (or New Haven).
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Once we have the starting values, we add a small factor based on location of the game. There is no adjustment to the home team, a very small adjustment for a neutral-site game, and a slightly larger adjustment to the visiting team. Once all the values are captured, we take each team’s mean opponents’ factored Score which gives us our PS-SOS metric. From that we can rack and stack at the team level or the conference level. In this preseason review, we did both. Although this is not exactly how it works, we can look at the PS-SOS metric as a team’s average opponent’s win total from last season, assuming an all Core 4 schedule with every game played at home. It is not exact, because the number of wins does not directly impact the metric, but the scale is such that it is a good approximation. FCS teams will have numbers, generally, below 5 and some FBS teams will approach or exceed 10.
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What we’ll see tomorrow is the “weakest” conference based on those metrics sorted from most challenged team to least challenged team, along with each team’s overall rank. A couple of caveats: 1) the rankings are for entertainment purposes only and are not designed to suggest betting strategy (in fact, we have never bet on college sports because we like our money in our grubby little hands), and 2) the PS-SOS assumption is that each team will have a 2026 identical to 2025. While that is, we suppose, possible, do we really think Vanderbilt will win 10 again without Deigo? Do we think Indiana will be undefeated again? Will James Madison repeat a great performance? Will Clemson, Penn St, or LSU rebound from last year? What about Virginia or Boston College or Colorado or South Carolina?
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The PS-SOS metric is flawed, but it is the best thing we have based on facts and data to help us build up to our kickoff!
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That’s it for today. Thank you for waiting patiently for the new GCR season to get rolling. We are always appreciative of you for reading (it’s why we do this), for any comments or questions (it’s why we get better), and, especially, for sharing our content with others (it’s how we grow). We will always be free to read and free to register for automatic emails. We will always be ad-free. We do not sell any information. In fact, we get no compensation for this blog other than the comments we receive from our wonderful readers. This blog, going back to its initial email distribution to a half dozen people, has always been a labor of love for us and for the great sports of college football and basketball. Until tomorrow, JoJo and G.
