Is this man reacting to the awl in his nose or college football's nonconference schedules? No one knows for sure.These days in college football it's rarely a matter of who has the best nonconference slate, but rather who has the least worst. According to the Oklahoman, that title goes to the ACC and their impressive(?) 48% BCS nonconference schedule. The entire field:
- ACC: 48%
- Pac Ten: 45%
- Big East: 39%
- SEC & Big Twelve: 31%
- Big Ten: 29%
And last: the Big Ten, which plays about one real nonconference opponent per team and fills the schedule out with MAC snacks and the like. Making it even worse for the Big Ten are some of the "BCS" opponents they've lined up: Notre Dame (3), Syracuse (2), Iowa State, and Duke comprise more than half of their BCS opponent games. Those teams were 9-39 last year.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-13-2008 @ 11:24PM
Doug Mennen said...
Make no mistake, I am no Big 10 fan (or apologist, depending upon who you ask). However I do not want to hear some SEC fan post about how the above post is further validation of the claim that the Big 10 is the weakest of the BCS conferences. Last thing any of us want to hear is some cliche about Ohio State or SEC speed or what have you.
Playing devils advocate with Brian:
While the B10 does play ND, Duke, Syracuse, and Iowa State. They also play Utah, Mizzou, Oregon State, USC, Oregon, Central Michigan, and Pitt. And Temple returns 21 starters from last years 4-8 team (watch out! The Owls could go bowlin'!)
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5-14-2008 @ 12:13AM
George B Vieto said...
Do the SEC, Big Ten and Big Twelve have to dig into the bottom of the barrel for non conference opponents?
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5-14-2008 @ 10:40AM
Chris said...
You joke about the Big 10 playing Duke. But the team that played them (Northwestern) lost to them. Which brings me to my point, can we please not count northwestern when talking about big 10 athletics?
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5-15-2008 @ 12:26PM
jallotta said...
Why would we want to discount Northwestern when talking about Big 10 athletics? Assuming you mean football, Northwestern has won the Big Ten more times since 1995 than any team other than Michigan and Ohio State. Granted, the past 2 years weren't very good but the Duke game was only their head coach's 14th game.
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5-17-2008 @ 1:05AM
Ken Braun said...
I've been looking at this too, and while I agree re: the Pac 10, I think it's slightly misleading to ding the Big Ten so harshly if you don't look also at the quality of the non-BCS teams that they play.
Michigan, for example, plays Utah and Toledo -- two mid-majors that could both win or compete for their respective conference titles this year. In addition to Cal and Notre Dame, Michigan State takes on Florida Atlantic -- an 8-5 conference champ and bowl winning team from last year that returns nearly the entire team full of starters.
Minnesota also plays Florida Atlantic and Wisconsin plays Fresno State (a legit contender for the WAC title and maybe a BCS bowl.)
The Big Ten standing in this ranking would improve considerably if those mid-major games were filled instead with bottom feeder BCS games against Baylor, Vandy, Duke, Ole Miss and more Syracuse, but the strength of schedule would tank as a result.
So what's the right measure?
Conversely, the ACC's shiney #1 ranking looks a bit tarnished when offset by the likes of Clemson, Va Tech and Georgia Tech -- each of whom found room of their skeds for not one, but TWO mediocre 1AA opponents.
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