If you want to look for this season's Group of Five gate crasher when it comes to the CFP, I can give you a couple of non-conference schedules that may do the trick – if the team involved can win all their games. They will face Duke on the road followed by home tilts against Louisiana, Rutgers and UMass. Weakest schedule - Temple: You can hardly blame the Owls for trying to get some wins. All three of those games are away from home this season. Toughest schedule - Navy: The Midshipmen have three locked in nonconference opponents every year - Air Force, Army and Notre Dame. Cincy will also play Indiana again, this time at home.
Unlike last season, where a win at Notre Dame created a floor for the Bearcats in the CFP Rankings, there is no such game this season unless Arkansas is much better than we expect. The next-closest conference is the Mountain West with 31%.Ĭincinnati will look to repeat as champions of the league and make another run for the CFP, but this season's nonconference schedule will preclude that. The league will play 41% of its games at home. The AAC is again leading the Group of Five in percentage of home nonconference games - and by a wide margin. Weakest schedule - UCLA: The Bruins should be able to do better than a slate of Bowling Green, Alabama State and South Alabama at home. Toughest schedule - Colorado: The Buffaloes may need to get off to a good start to keep coach Karl Dorrell's seat cool, but a schedule of home against TCU and trips to Air Force and Minnesota will make that a challenge. There is nary a road game among any of those schedules. Northwestern also gets dishonorable mention for a Duke, Southern Illinois, Miami (OH) trifecta. It's so bad that a reporter asked Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh about it earlier this summer. Perhaps you prefer Michigan's slate of Colorado State, Hawaii and UConn. Weakest schedule - Take your pick: Minnesota is my choice with home games against New Mexico State, Western Illinois and Colorado.
Ohio State deserves a mention because, besides Notre Dame, it hosts MAC favorite Toledo and Arkansas State. Toughest schedule - Nobody: It's embarrassing for this league to not be able to look at any one schedule and say that it will really test that particular team. We will also get another renewal of the Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry on Sept. Also, Penn State will travel to Auburn and Michigan State will visit Washington. 3 in a game that is likely to have College Football Playoff implications. Notre Dame visits Ohio State to kick off the season on Sept.
That is not to say that there aren't some good games. Still, it is one of only two leagues that plays more than half its nonconference games at home and fewer than 20% on the road. However, it has been dethroned this season. The SEC is typically the king when it comes to playing home nonconference games and avoiding road trips. There are six nonconference games in the league that day, many of which serve as a nice break before rivalry weekend. Two of these games are scheduled on what I call "Sabbatical Saturday," the weekend before Thanksgiving. Every team in the SEC has one on the schedule, which is true almost every season. SEC teams also know exactly what to do with that extra nonconference game: Play an FCS opponent. The SEC is one of the two Power Five conferences still playing only eight league games. Listed below are the strongest and weakest in each conference along with a ranking of the toughest in the entire FBS this season. With that in mind, here is an evaluation of each league's nonconference schedules as we prepare for the 2022 season. That is an incredibly difficult thing to do in football because most games are scheduled many years in advance. If a league were going to try to game the system, it would have its best teams play at least one great opponent - to show the committee they are serious contenders - and have the noncontenders try to just schedule wins so they build quality records for their opponents. Teams do not have a choice what conference games are on their schedule, nor which nonconference opponents those conference opponents play, but the nonconference slates of your conference opponents are hardly unimportant. There are numerous ways to measure a team's strength of schedule, but it will always be based on some measure of the quality of its opponents. Others may suffer early losses against top-tier opponents. Some teams have gaudy nonconference records but build them against creampuffs. One of the most significant factors the College Football Playoff Selection Committee considers when putting together its rankings is strength of schedule.