G’s Exploration or The Toughest 2019 Schedules

In my first blog, I talked about the inherent inaccuracy of the preseason polls. My wife and I talked about this today after the upsets of Tennessee, Purdue, and Missouri by Mountain West and Sun Belt teams. She asked if Ga State was ranked high. The answer, after week 1 – and reason #427 I don’t publish until after the 4th week – not really. The GCR sees that it beat a team on the road a level up by 8 and that said team is winless. Are they ranked higher than where they were last year? Yes, but the logic doesn’t indicate that they will remain. Are they ranked higher than the South Carolina team that blew a 4Q lead yet again or a Minnesota squad the squeaked past an FCS team (2 levels below)? yes…for now. All is subject to change based on what happens on the field next week, and the next, and the next. If I were to do a preseason it would be solely based on the wins and losses or the GCR total scores of previous seasons. Maybe I’ll do that one of these seasons, but I prefer the purity of staying in season – even if delays the first publication.

That said, I did add something this year that I had never done before. A study in expected SOS based on last year’s results using the criteria (other than opp’s opp’s SOS) that the ranking uses. The easiest schedule belongs to Stetson of the Pioneer League. Their first game against perennial really not good Presbyterian (Big South) was hurricaned out which could improve their projected SOS, but I didn’t make any adjustments for anything that happened week 1. The easiest FBS schedule goes to App State at 126th. The easiest Power 5 schedule is owned by Arizona State at 112th. Overall, the SEC faces the biggest gauntlet with 8 of the top 25 projected SOS spots. The ACC and Pac 12 are next with the Big 12 and Big 10 rounding out the top 5. The easiest schedule for a Power 5 conference’s most difficult is Michigan at 18 – 7 SEC and 5 ACC schools top that. The overall most difficult schedule belongs to South Carolina – they face Alabama and Clemson at home, Georgia on the road – 6 teams won at least 10 last year and you can add a road game to Texas A&M who won 9 to that mix. Overall, FBS opponent’s (11 or the 12 games) won 101. That’s including the 2 that week one foe North Carolina had. After next week’s game against Charleston Southern, the remaining 10 teams won 99 games last season. It looks like it’s going to be a long year for Gamecock fans. Following is a table for all conferences for comparison (note Alabama and Kentucky tie for the easiest SEC schedule):

Then I thought about pulling all of the preseason shenanigans together and showed the projected SOS for the AP preseason top 25:

AP Rank	Team	Proj SOS
1	Clemson	80
2	Alabama	76
3	Georgia	15
4	Oklahoma	88
5	Ohio State	64
6	Louisiana St	5
7	Michigan	18
8	Florida	26
9	Notre Dame	60
10	Texas	42
11	Oregon	51
12	Texas A&M	10
13	Washington	53
14	Utah	91
15	Penn State	24
16	Auburn	16
17	Central Florida	92
18	Michigan St	31
19	Wisconsin	53
20	Iowa	40
21	Iowa St	32
22	Syracuse	49
23	Washington St	61
24	Nebraska	56
25	Stanford	17

Only 7 of the teams are facing a top 25 schedule. 4 of those are from the SEC, 2 from the Big 10, and one from the Pac 12. Central Florida, Utah, and Oklahoma have the easiest paths by a large margin.

But this is why preseason is inane, although a lot of fun to discuss and debate. All of this analysis is done based on last year. Transfers, NFL, graduation, coaching changes, injuries, recruiting etc., make each season unique. Personally it’s going to tough to unseat Clemson and Bama – but weird things have already happened and there’s no telling what will happen over the next few months. All I really know is, I can’t wait to find out.

See you next time,

Robert