Happy Thursday, college football fans and with 65 days until opening kickoff of the opening games, the excitement is becoming real. Just 10 more Fridays to get through. Maybe I can make it. It makes it necessary to get through theses Preseason SOS blogs (13 more counting this one) so that we can be ready to go. So far, we’ve looked at the nine conferences with the easiest average SOS (as estimated by the GCR) for next year. We still have 6 FCS conferences to go and we’ll knock out half of them today. For all of Division I (FBS and FCS) there are 26 conferences (I count FBS independents as a conference for this purpose). Last blog, I started giving them an alpha as well as a numeric placement as we count down to the “A” conference or the one with the most difficult PS SOS.
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Our first conference today is a semi-new one. The WAC (Western Athletic Conference) used to be fairly significant, but football was dropped after the 2012 season but was reinstated in 2021 with 2 members (Dixie St and Tarleton). Those 2 competed with the 1-year Automatic Qualifying Seven Conference (seriously) to make a temporary 9-team league. This year, they’ve added 6 teams to be a legitimate conference (while the AQ7 either moved to the WAC or became the new ASUN). 3 of their number made the playoffs last year and I’m looking forward to some competitive games. Dixie St, in just their second year as a D1 school, has the 19th most difficult FCS schedule and S Utah, who came over from the Big Sky conference, has the 20th spot only .0005 behind Dixie St. The 8 teams average 2.879 (good for 17th or “Q”) and are the first conference in our study whose average SOS is above the average FCS SOS (2.685).
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Dixie St (19) | 1-10 | 218 | 3.494 | 150 | 130.1% | 69.5% |
| S Utah (20) | 1-10 | 193 | 3.494 | 151 | 130.1 | 69.5 |
| Lamar | 2-9 | 169 | 3.079 | 172 | 114.7 | 61.3 |
| Incarnate Word | 10-3 | 205 | 2.967 | 178 | 110.5 | 59.0 |
| Sam Houston | 11-1 | 196 | 2.849 | 184 | 106.1 | 56.7 |
| Abilene Christian | 5-6 | 182 | 2.838 | 185 | 105.7 | 56.5 |
| Tarleton | 6-5 | 252 | 2.192 | 222 | 81.6 | 43.6 |
| Steph F Austin | 8-4 | 174 | 2.118 | 229 | 78.9 | 42.1 |
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In the 16th (or “P”) spot is what seems to be a rarity in FCS conferences this year, the stable Southern Conference or SoCon. It has the same 9 teams as last year and they average 2.987 SOS among them. Only Samford has a top 25 SOS at number 4, but they are one of only 3 FCS conferences in which all members average 2.400 (89.4% of FCS mean) or higher. Here is what SoCon will be facing this year:
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Samford (4) | 4-7 | 192 | 4.129 | 135 | 153.8% | 82.2 |
| Furman | 6-5 | 164 | 3.279 | 162 | 122.1 | 65.2 |
| Wofford | 1-10 | 223 | 3.233 | 164 | 120.4 | 64.3 |
| VMI | 6-5 | 185 | 3.105 | 169 | 115.6 | 61.8 |
| Citadel | 4-7 | 166 | 2.939 | 180 | 109.5 | 58.5 |
| Mercer | 7-3 | 135 | 2.723 | 191 | 101.4 | 54.2 |
| E Tennessee St | 11-2 | 197 | 2.570 | 202 | 95.7 | 51.1 |
| Chattanooga | 6-5 | 157 | 2.492 | 206 | 92.4 | 49.4 |
| W Carolina | 4-7 | 153 | 2.419 | 210 | 90.1 | 48.1 |
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So far today, we had a “new” conference, a stable conference and the Big South. Over the last few seasons, they’ve had more changes than they have teams. Losing more this year and adding Bryant to get to the required 6 to be legitimate, it should be an…interesting season. Only Bryant had a winning season last year (in an awful conference) so who will step up. The 6 teams average 3.156 (15th or “O” place), and in additional to being our first over 3.000, they have 3 top 25 SOS projections: Gardner Webb (2), Robert Morris (9), and Charleston Southern (16). Here they are:
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Gardner Webb (2) | 4-7 | 236 | 4.374 | 133 | 162.9% | 87.0% |
| Robert Morris (9) | 4-6 | 183 | 3.770 | 140 | 140.4 | 75.0 |
| Charleston Southern (16) | 4-6 | 132 | 3.578 | 147 | 133.2 | 71.2 |
| Campbell | 3-8 | 160 | 3.001 | 176 | 111.8 | 59.7 |
| NC A&T | 5-6 | 203 | 2.437 | 207 | 90.8 | 48.5 |
| Bryant | 7-4 | 249 | 1.776 | 249 | 66.1 | 35.3 |
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That’s it for today. Either tomorrow or Saturday, I’ll finish up the FCS with the top 3 (Big Sky, Missouri Valley, and Atlantic Sun), 14th-12th overall. Then I’m taking 3 weeks of vacation returning in the middle of July to shift to the FBS. That means 11 conferences in less than 6 weeks leading up to August 27. Thank you for reading. If you like what you see, please share with others. If you don’t, leave a comment so I can be better next time. G
