This is not a political blog – and it won’t be today either. I haven’t posted in a week, in part because there are many things more important than a theoretical SOS for a season that may or may not happen and in part because my work notched up substantially (that’s a really happy and good thing). All of that said, as I’m watching the SpaceX launch I am very aware that, regardless of the seriousness of life as 2020 continues to test us, I need a break from it once in a while, and I assume you do too. With that in mind, we are going to continue with two more Group of 5 “conferences.” I put that in quotation marks because one of them is the FBS Independents which, of course, are not really a conference. Adding to the confusion and difficulty is Notre Dame, most definitely a Power 5 type team, is in that group. More questionable is BYU. But, more on them in a moment.
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In 9th place (out of the 25 Division I conferences, including the two independents groups), are the FBS Independents. the 7 teams, some of which are cast offs from the American or Sun or got left behind when conferences when defunct or promoted themselves to FBS and found no one wanted them. And of course there is Army, a nearly lifelong independent (except for 1998-2004 when they were part of Conference USA) and Notre Dame who remains independent despite being part of the ACC for every other sport (except, duh, hockey). They do play 5 ACC games a year, but also have long-standing rivalries against Stanford and Southern Cal. If they became full members and didn’t give up those rivalries, they would only have 2 more games for flexibility. I don’t have any inside information, but that’s the most logical answer I can come up with for not taking the ACC leap (oh, it also would make them a 15-team conference which could be awkward without creative divisions such as 3 5-team or finding another team (West Virginia?) and have 4 4-team groupings). But that’s a post for another day (and yes, I’m working on building mega-conferences). Here is the graph for the Independents.
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Interestingly, BYU has a more difficult schedule than Notre Dame. In fact, they have the most difficult September in the country. While many schools from intense conferences play a couple of “easy” games early, the Cougars play at Utah (11-3), host Michigan St (7-6), and travel to Arizona St (8-5) and Minnesota (11-2). That’s an adjusted opponent’s win average of 13.000. That is tied for the 3rd most difficult month (the others are faced by Power 5 schools and I’ll reveal them in future posts). Good luck, Cougars! On the flip side, from Army through Liberty look, at least at these early stages, to have a good chance to earn a bowl bid – by playing questionable quality teams. The other big thing we see here is BYU and Notre Dame are clearly above and different from the rest. One more thought on BYU. The are deemed a Group of 5 school. If you look at their schedule, it could be argued that they should be a Power 5 school. Most disagree. I like to think of them like basketball’s 6th man. They are Power 5s 66th man. But they did help the FBS Independents land in the middle of the Power 5 SOS with an average of 6.261.
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And that brings us to the 8th most difficult conference for 2020. The 10-team Sun Belt Conference sporting an average SOS of 6.334. Last year, App St dominated (except for the Ga Southern game), but other teams made them a fairly competitive conference. Here’s the list:
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Arkansas St has what has to be the weirdest statement I’ve seen so far. 10 of the games they play are against really tough competition or should be winnable games. They could end of 7-5 and bowl bound while being blown out 4 times. Here is their schedule.
- @Memphis (12-2) – worth 13.5 points
- Howard (2-10) – 1.0
- @Michigan (9-4) – 13.5
- Tulsa (4-8) – 4.5
- @Coastal Carolina (5-7) – 5.625
- Georgia St (7-6) – 5.25
- @ App St (13-1) – 14.625
- Troy (5-7) – 3.75
- @ Louisiana (11-3) – 12.375
- ULM (5-7) – 3.75
- @ Texas St (3-9) – 3.375
- South Alabama (2-10) – 1.5
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For the rest of the rest of the conference, App St will do well again because they are App St, but watch for Ga Southern to really push them for the East title. Louisiana will probably not see a lot of competition (other than from Arkansas St) in the west.
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That’s it for today. Stay safe out there. Please comment, question, and most importantly share with others. Thanks, G
