College Football Top 25 Teams Strength of Schedule

Is it true that the teams win BCS national championships because they play soft schedules? If that's true, playing a lot of weak teams might be a strategy to success in post season play. The charge of top ranked teams playing weak schedules is common but is it true? Since we do not know who will play in the post season games, we will not know for sure until the end of the year. We can attempt to answer the question of soft/weak scheduling if we can agree that teams ranked in at least the preseason top 25 are most likely to play in the national championship.

USA Today, Sports Illustrated, and Rivals.com have all ranked college teams and those are the polls that I will use to answer the soft/weak scheduling question. A lot of the same teams are in all three polls top 25 with larger differences mainly among 18 - 25 ranks. For my analysis I will use the USA Today Top 25 and then cross referenced where the USA Top 25 were ranked on the Sports Illustrated and Rivals polls.

Here are the facts:

Two of the Top 25 teams USC and Oregon will play 5 other Top 25 teams this year. Three of the Top 25 teams Oklahoma, LSU and Georgia will play 4 other Top 25 teams. Fifteen of the teams listed in the Top 25 will play at least 3 other Top 25 teams. All of the teams ranked in the preseason Top 25 will play at least one other Top 25 team. Boise State and Notre Dame are the only two teams rank preseason Top 25 that only play one other Top 25 team.

So what's the answer to our question? The answer is: Top 25 teams play other Top 25 teams. Yes, #1 Florida opens against Charleston Southern, #2 Texas opens against Louisiana-Monroe (ULM), and #4USC opens against San Jose State and non of these opening opponents ranks higher than 101 in the SI 1-120 rankings. But, Florida and Texas play 3 other Top 25 teams and USC plays 5 top 25 teams. #3 Oklahoma opens against SI #22 BYU and plays 3 other top 25 teams this season.

For those of you that noticed that 2 PAC 10 teams in the Top 25 scheduled 5 other Top 25 teams and 2 SEC teams in the Top 25 scheduled 4 other Top 25 teams, let the debate begin. Of the 10 Top 25 teams that the PAC 10 teams (USC and Oregon) play only 3 are in the top 15. Of the 8 Top 25 teams that the SEC teams (LSU and Georgia) play all 8 are in the top 15. Six of those 8 Top 25 teams are in the Top 10.

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