Greetings everyone! I hope you are having a good a weekend and managing to stay safe. After months of toiling through the lesser conferences, we have finally hit the big boys – the conferences where we can expect teams to play difficult opponents more times than not. Conferences where the patsy game is a week of ridicule or at least a good week to check out a new restaurant that might not even have a tv, as horrible as that place sounds. These are the teams that fans want to stand up and brag about the challenge. Or so we think. Now before I bash this weakest scheduled conference in the Power 5, let’s recognize that they still have the 5th most difficult schedule in college football.
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This conference has 2 of the top 3 preseason SOS in 2020. Yet still fell to number 5 because of the bottom half, schedule wise. In fact, with 65 Power 5 teams, 11 of the 14 in this conference are in the bottom half, a full 8 in the bottom quarter, and the overall #64 Power 5 schedule. Yes, you may have guessed it, the ACC with an average SOS of 7.912 takes the meh schedule slot. Last year the conference had just one team (#5 Clemson at 14-1) with double digit wins. The only other FBS conference with fewer than 2 was the MAC. Another way to look at this (and yes, I’ll do all of this analysis for each of the Power 5 conferences and sum up with comparatives), the final win/loss totals for the conference were 97-84 or a .536 winning percentage. Without Clemson (yes, I’ll take out the best team for each as well), they were a mere 83-83 – .500. They were 5th in both of these categories for 2019 results. Their SOS last year must have been sky high, right? Nope, the average SOS Rank for the ACC last year was 43.2 (but Notre Dame sort of counts too, right? They were 40th) – last of the 5. So they had the easiest schedule and had the lowest winning percentage both with and without their best team. Wow. Clemson’s rise to power while the teams added to create an SEC/Big 10 level of competition (Virginia Tech, Miami FL, Florida St), just hasn’t panned out. Before I came up with the GCR, I wrote formulaic simulations to play fictitious seasons. I’ve also played a lot of downloadable games of various sports. Here’s what I’ve learned: when a team becomes so dominant that the rest of the division/conference/league fail to compete regularly AND it becomes a non-transient scenario, the rest of the league gets worse, not better. I think that’s what we are seeing in the ACC. Clemson dominates such that it’s a foregone conclusion in February that they are the team to beat. They had 5 more wins than the second best team. Imagine that even in other sports – winning the National League by 58 games. Based on this, Clemson has actually put itself in a precarious position – lose a game and they provide an excuse to miss the playoff. The way to combat that is load the schedule for non-conference games so that they can say “see, my conference is down, but look what I did to…” Last year even with 2 playoff wins, they had the 51st most difficult schedule. Let’s see how the ACC shakes out this year:
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First off, the color code – green is for Power 5 (yellow for Group of 5 and black with white lettering for FCS).
We see Georgia Tech and Louisville are representing. Both play Clemson and Notre Dame (more on that in a sec) which shoots them to the top. Tech plays at Georgia to end the season while Louisville faces 8-5 Kentucky to finish up. There are only 4 teams who have a preseason SOS over 9.000 so the Yellow Jackets and the Cardinals are in the elite.
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Notre Dame and the ACC have an interesting relationship. A member of the ACC in every other sponsored sport (not hockey) they won’t give up Independent status in football. Half of their games are against ACC opponents. Those are determined by the ACC and ND, not by the individual teams. So, look at the table above – I have no idea if this is going to be true for all of the Power 5 conferences or not, but will look. Every game that is the most difficult is an assigned game. All are ACC/ND except Georgia Tech at Georgia. That got me thinking – how much are these teams challenging themselves otherwise. In non-preassigned games (NOT conference games, Notre Dame games, or annual rivalry games – Clemson-South Carolina, Georgia Tech-Georgia, Florida St-Florida, Louisville-Kentucky), how did they do. These 45 games have 14 FCS games (not shame in each team playing a patsy, right?). The remaining 31 games include 23 Group of 5 games. That leaves 9 vs other power 5 schools. That’s right…9. Of those 2 won 10 games last year (Virginia is playing Georgia and Virginia Tech is playing Penn St). One lost 10 games last year (Syracuse is taking on Rutgers). For comparison, the 65 Power 5 schools had 15 double digit winning teams and just 2 double digit losing ones. The 65 Group of 5 teams had 13 10+ winning teams and 8 10+ losing teams. The ACC plays 4 great Group of 5 games (Georgia Tech and UNC both play UCF, Florida St plays Boise St, and Wake Forest plays App St), but they play 5 horrible Group of 5 games (Wake Forest and Virginia play Old Dominion, Virginia and UNC play UConn, Clemson plays winless Akron). By the way, each team plays an FCS team, again, completely legit – or would be without the above list – and the 127 FCS schools had double digit winners and 12 double digit losers. The ACC plays one of each (UNC plays runner-up James Madison and Miami FL plays 1-11 Wagner). The total win/loss record last year for the 45 non-forced opponents? 287-284.
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Notre Dame had a 11-2 season last year so the teams with the Irish on the schedule get a boost. Georgia Tech and Florida St have annual rivalries with double digit wins last year. Louisville got a better than normal Kentucky boost. And while Clemson can’t help their rivalry only won 4 (in a horrific year by the Gamecocks), they could boost their schedule otherwise.
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No their non-required games are 6-6 FCS Citadel and 0-12 Gof5 Akron. The SOS of 7.000 tied for 71st with South Alabama of the Sun Belt. Yes, the Sun Belt. Without the Notre Dame game, they would land 103rd just below Rice of Conference USA. Yes, Conference USA. Clemson is a national level talent, truly elite, and this is the best they can do? This is why they have to be perfect – a single loss and SOS comes in to play and they have the 2nd easiest in the Power 5 (yes, I’ll trash that team too and yes, it’s an SEC team, and no, they will not be in the championship picture). Let’s compare Georgia Tech (who’s raw number is higher than South Carolina’s was last year) and Clemson. I’ve taken out the bye-week so it looks like they both play Syracuse at the same time. It’s to compare game by game.
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The blue marks indicate the more difficult game according to preseason SOS (home games are easier than away games, etc.) It’s why game 8 Tech gets the nod when both teams are playing the same opponent – away instead of home. Tech’s opponent’s have a 25-game lead (baseball math) over Clemson’s. Clemson is better than this and should challenge themselves more. Not that my opinion matters in the least.
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That’s it for the ACC – top to bottom facing the easiest set of schedules in the Power 5 despite Georgia Tech, Louisville, and Florida St doing the best they can to raise the bar.
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Hope you enjoyed the analysis. Please comment and let’s get a discussion going. And as always, thanks for reading and thank you for sharing with others! G
