Welcome back to the next installment of the 2022 College Football Prep. For those who are new, just forgotten, or are on vacation, the GCR looks at all Division I conferences. There are five Power 5 conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and the SEC) plus the oddball Notre Dame who isn’t connected to a conference (in football), but plays 5 ACC (their conference in other sports). In previous years, I’ve looked at them separately, but as will come up in a few posts, they aren’t playing a top tier Power 5 schedule so this year, I’m just lumping them with the rest of the independents. Speaking of them, the seven independents (and yes, I treat them as a conference) belong in the Group of 5 along with Teh American, Conference USA, MAC (Mid-American), Mountain West, and the Sun Belt. Put the Power 5 and the Group of 5 together and you get the FBS or Football Bowl Subdivision. These 131 teams are, generally, eligible for bowl games and the 4-team (at least for now) playoff. The final group is the FCS or Football Playoff Subdivision. These 130 schools are not eligible for bowls (except for the Celebration Bowl which pits the SWAC champion and the MEAC champion). Most are eligible for the 24-team playoff (which is the highest officially recognized football championship by the NCAA), but the Ivy League, the SWAC, and the MEAC choose not to participate. As a rule, the Power 5 plays the most difficult schedules (because they play a lot of other Power 5 teams) and the FCS plays the weakest. Over the next few posts, as we lead up to the first games of the season, I will show each conference’s SOS (Strength of Schedule) with a team-by-team breakout. Today, I’ll talk about the bottom 3: the conferences with the easiest average schedules.
…..
While I don’t publish the GCR formulas for in-season performance and SOS, I do give a general process (more on that refresher as we get closer to initial kickoff), I can give a little of an idea of preseason SOS which is much closer to the original (10 or so years ago) formula. Let’s say team A is playing team B. At the time the game is played (more on that in a minute), A has 3 wins and B has 9 wins. Which team is playing the more difficult team? If both are in the same league (Power 5, Group of 5, or FCS) then A has a tougher game. But if team A is a Power 5 school and team B is an FCS school, it’s likely team B has the tougher game, so the wins have to be discounted for the “lesser” leagues. During the season, I don’t know how many wins the teams will end up with, so SOS updates every game as if every game was played “now”, but for the preseason SOS, I use the previous season’s win totals. After discounting for league differences, I look at where the game will be played. Home games are easiest so are unchanged, but away games get a bonus, with neutral games in the middle. For example, if team A plays team B at home (assume both are Power 5 and have no discount), A will get credit for playing a 9 win team and B will get credit for a 4.5 win team. If A is on the road, they will get credit for playing a 13.5 win team and B only gets credit for a 3 win team. If the game is at a neutral site, A gets 9.9 wins and B gets 3.3. I hope that makes sense. To get the preseason SOS for each of the 261 teams, I simply take the average after discounts and adjustments. One more note: if an FCS team plays a non-division I team, there is a severe discount, similar to the discount a Power 5 team gets when playing an FCS team.
…..
All of that to say, the conference with the lowest average preseason SOS is the lowly Pioneer League. Its 11 members have an average of just 1.942 and they have the team (St Thomas Tommies out of St Paul) with the easiest D1 schedule at 1.325. In the tables below, the FCS AVG is the percentage of the average FCS team, and D1 AVG is compared to the mean for all 261 teams. Here are your 2022 Pioneer League from Drake to St Thomas:
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Drake | 2-9 | 250 | 2.425 | 209 | 90.3% | 48.3% |
| Morehead St | 7-4 | 154 | 2.320 | 215 | 86.4 | 46.2 |
| Butler | 3-8 | 251 | 2.240 | 217 | 83.4 | 44.6 |
| Presbyterian | 2-9 | 255 | 2.215 | 219 | 82.5 | 44.1 |
| Valparaiso | 4-7 | 202 | 2.080 | 233 | 77.4 | 41.4 |
| Stetson | 4-7 | 243 | 2.060 | 234 | 76.7 | 41.0 |
| San Diego | 7-4 | 199 | 1.855 | 246 | 69.1 | 36.9 |
| Davidson | 8-3 | 212 | 1.655 | 251 | 61.6 | 32.9 |
| Dayton | 6-4 | 244 | 1.630 | 254 | 60.7 | 32.4 |
| Marist | 5-5 | 234 | 1.560 | 258 | 58.1 | 31.0 |
| St Thomas | 7-3 | 248 | 1.325 | 261 | 49.3 | 26.4 |
…..
Coming in at 25th is the vaulted Ivy League. This conference doesn’t start playing games until a few weeks into the season and play 10 in 10 weeks…and they are done. With an average of 2.172 for the 8 teams, here they are from Brown to Columbia:
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Brown | 2-8 | 237 | 2.574 | 201 | 95.9% | 51.2% |
| Cornell | 2-8 | 245 | 2.360 | 214 | 87.9 | 47.0 |
| Yale | 5-5 | 198 | 2.277 | 216 | 84.8 | 45.3 |
| Dartmouth | 9-1 | 230 | 2.195 | 221 | 81.7 | 43.7 |
| Harvard | 8-2 | 211 | 2.129 | 227 | 79.3 | 42.4 |
| Penn | 3-7 | 247 | 2.112 | 230 | 78.7 | 42.0 |
| Princeton | 9-1 | 228 | 1.914 | 241 | 71.3 | 38.1 |
| Columbia | 7-3 | 225 | 1.815 | 247 | 67.6 | 36.1 |
…..
And in our final review for tonight, I give you the Northeast Conference whose 8 members comprise an average of 2.204 for PS SOS ranking them 24th. Of note, one of the three new FCS schools (Stonehill) is part of the conference. First you will notice some blanks in the table because there are no meaningful numbers for 2021 for them. Secondly, they only have 9 games on their schedule so far. Here is the NEC from Long Island to Stonehill:
| Team | ’21 W-L | ’21 SOS Rank | ’22 PS SOS | PS SOS Rank | FCS AVG | D1 AVG |
| Long Island | 2-8 | 214 | 3.309 | 157 | 124.4% | 66.4% |
| Wagner | 0-11 | 258 | 3.083 | 171 | 114.8 | 61.3 |
| Duquesne | 7-3 | 238 | 2.632 | 196 | 98.0 | 52.4 |
| Merrimack | 5-6 | 240 | 1.909 | 242 | 71.1 | 38.0 |
| St Francis | 5-6 | 207 | 1.903 | 243 | 70.9 | 37.9 |
| Sacred Heart | 8-4 | 239 | 1.641 | 252 | 61.1 | 32.7 |
| C Connecticut | 4-7 | 190 | 1.640 | 253 | 61.1 | 32.6 |
| Stonehill | — | — | 1.488 | 259 | 55.4 | 29.6 |
…..
That’s it for this installment. The next 4 posts will be 3 more FCS conferences. Then we’ll start working through the FBS. I hope you enjoy these. Thank you for reading, please comment and most of all, please share with others. Until next time, G
