Greetings and salutations oh great and wonderful readers. Last week I promised a Top 25 or 2 – I’m going to up that ante just a bit with 4 Top 25s and their corresponding Bottom 25s, as well as 3 Top 25 schedule cuts (and the easiest to go along with).
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I talk a lot about the Power 5, Group of 5 and FCS, and FBS. A quick refresher. The FCS or Football Championship Subdivision had 126 teams in 2019 (will add 2 and drop 1 for 2020, but that’s another post). These are teams from the Big Sky, or Southland, or Ohio Valley conferences, and others. They are not eligible for a bowl (with the odd exception of the Celebration Bowl between the SWAC conference championship game winner and some team the MEAC picks to play), but they do participate in a 24-team playoff (unless they are in the SWAC, MEAC, or Ivy League). FCS is in Division I and used to be called Division I – AA. Many of the teams play FBS (Power 5 or Group of 5) teams, mostly early in the season, in order to get a big paycheck (and most of the time a loss). Being in the FCS is a choice. Some really good teams decide to move to FBS and fight for a 6th win and a lucrative bowl game. Some of the more recent schools to do this are Liberty, Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Northern Illinois and others. Idaho made the jump a few years ago, but have since shifted back to FCS (something no other program has ever done). There are a few really good teams, but they are typically ranked below the FBS teams, primarily due to Strength of Schedule (SOS), a measurement of the degree of difficulty a given team faced during the season.
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The Group of 5 schools are part of the FBS or Football Bowl Subdivision and consists of 65 teams right now. In the current structure, it would take a miracle for a G5 team to make the 4-team playoff. The best team does get a New Year’s Six bowl which is for positions 5-12 (or whatever number the best G5 school is if below 12). All others are eligible for bowl games if a) they win 6 or more games and b) there are enough bowls for all who meet qualification a). All of the FBS independents, except Notre Dame, are G5 teams along with the American, USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt conferences.
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The Power 5 are the big boys (at least theoretically) and the upper half of the FBS. Coincidentally there are 65 teams in this league as well. Besides Notre Dame, you have the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC making up this subset.
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All of that is important because I’ve split things up by these groups/leagues/divisions/whatever in this week’s analysis. I’ll call them leagues for want of a better term. I had a request to color code teams into these leagues for easier reading – your wish is my command. Blue will be for the Power 5, Yellow for the Group of 5 and Pinkish for the FCS. All Bottom 25 data has the worst in the top spot (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).
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First up, is the Top and Bottom 25 in Total Rank. First, the overall rank that is a mixture of the 3 leagues.
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We see the top belongs to the Power 5 (blue) and the bottom to the FCS (pink) with the Group of 5 teams spread throughout. If you’ve read even a few of these posts, you know that once I start looking at something, I go just a bit on the nuts side with different ways of looking at the data. So, I thought to myself, what would these charts look like if I separated them by league. To say a Group of 5 team is 55th might sound a tad mediocre, but they would be a top 15 (actually 13th this year) G5 team which commands a little bit more respect – makes the shoulders go back just a little more. So, Power 5 first:
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Remember there are only 65 teams so this list contains all but the middle 15 (which are spread across 26 spots). I thought is was interesting 3 bowl teams landed in the bottom 25 led by #16 from the bottom Illinois. At the same time there are 78 teams in bowl games and all 3 (you can tell by 13 game schedules) ended in the top 78, so maybe it’s not that weird. If the leagues were completely separate, this would be the top and bottom of the highest league. But how about the middle, aka the Group of 5, aka G5?
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In this cut, there is a much larger difference between the top 2 or 3 and #s 24 and 25. All of the top 25 played bowl games (even though 3 of them are outside of the top 78 post bowls) and none of the bottom 25 played a post season game (Army played 13 because of an away game in Hawaii). Again, there are only 65 so we are missing the middle 15, but those are spread out over 55 spots. How about the FCS? How did they turn out?
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The FCS had 126 teams so the other 76 are spread across 107 spots. Only 4 FBS (all G5) are in the range of the FCS bottom dwellers. The FCS is a have/have not league. There are 8 Power 5 schools ranked above 100. 12 FCS schools are better than they are (ranked not necessarily picked to win in a head to head battle). 5 of them would “qualify” in the top 78 for bowls, if eligible and the NCAA used the GCR for selection – as it should, am I right? 🙂
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The ranking is important, which is why I posted it first. If you are still with me, I took a cut to show the toughest and easiest schedules. The top 25 overall are also the top 25 Power 5 (and the bottom is all FCS) so I combined those. There’s a little more to it than this, but the formula for SOS is based on how many wins your opponents have (with a little bump for playing on the road or neutral) adjusted for other factors. It’s not exactly this, but it was designed originally to give an approximation of an average Power 5 opponent regardless of who you played. An example: if a team has an SOS Score of 7.62, it means that their average opponent was the equivalent, with all adjustments taken, of a 7.62 win team in a neutral site. Power 5 teams get discounted for playing Group of 5 and even more so for an FCS team. G5 teams get bonuses for playing Power 5, but discounts for FCS. FCS gets major bonuses for Power 5, slightly lesser for G5, and are punished for playing NAIA or Division II teams. If an FCS team has a score of 2.00, it does not mean they played a bunch of 2-9 teams. Their opponents were probably in the .450 to .550 winning percentage range, but, more than likely they did not play an FBS team and probably did play a lower division team. I hope that made sense. Let’s look at the Top/Bottom 25 SOS and how those teams did. I plugged in the actual SOS score rather than the rank because I think it makes more sense. Let’s start with the Power 5. Note: the Rank listed is the team’s overall final rank considering SOS and performance (the same as in the charts above).
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The first thing I noticed is that 8 of the top 25 played more difficult schedules and 8 others played easier ones. That puts 9 of them in the middle 15. Also of note, only 4 teams had scores above 8.00 (think about that – the average team would be something like 8-4 every week, all things considered) while 3 had 5.00 or lower. Just from 1 to 25 there’s a drop of almost 2 1/3 points, but from 25 to 65 dropped just over 2.00 points. Another point of note: Compare South Carolina, Purdue, and NC State. All of them are 4-8 teams but are 64th (1st in SOS), 91st (25th), and 114th (69th) in Total Rank. SOS can make all the difference in where a team lands in the GCR. Let’s see how the Group of 5 shake out:
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So how bad were Massachusetts, UTEP, and Akron. A combined 2-34 and all were had one of the 7 easiest schedules in the Group of 5. UMASS had a 2.82 (think of playing Vanderbilt 12 times) and won just once!! And that win was over winless AKRON!!!!! Don’t get me started. Kudos to Cincinnati and Navy for playing decent schedules and performing well. Now let’s bring on the FCS.
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Another head scratcher: Abilene Christian had a SOS of 0.32 and had a losing record. Imagine how bad it would have been if they didn’t finish their season at Mississippi State!
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For all of these SOS charts we see a wide range from the elite difficult to the “let’s dance around the issue” schedules for all leagues. That’s why I love the college game. About 5 or 6 years ago I had a similar ranking for the pros. By the end of the season, the teams were ranked pretty much by the number of wins they had. In the pros, the difference in SOS after 16 games is so small that is has almost no impact. That’s why I dropped that and put all of my effort into the college game. Yep, the teams with 0 or 1 loss at the end of the season will be near the top, unless you’re #49 16-0 North Dakota State who played no FBS schools (that changes next season when they take on Oregon). It matters and that’s why I report on it.
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Until next time, thanks for reading. I’m looking forward to comments on this one. Thank you for sharing with others. G
