BCS football

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On College Football Scheduling Trends

I started tracking out-of-conferences games of BCS conference teams five years ago when the NCAA expanded the regular season to 12 games. The statistics show the following:

  • Number of games against BCS conference teams is relatively constant.
  • Number of games played against nonD1 teams is increasing.
  • Number of games played against D1 teams is decreasing.

The table below displays cumulative statistics, while the graph below illustrates percent games against nonD1 teams yearly by conferences. Note: In 2007, the Big 12 value is the same as the SEC (thus hidden).

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On 2010 College Football OOC

Five years ago the college football regular season expanded to 12 games. Since then, I have monitored the out-of-conference games played by the BCS conference teams.

Some points about the study

  • Only out-of-conference (OOC) games are counted
  • It has nothing to do with determining “the better” conference nor designed to favor one conference over another
  • I classify teams as Division 1 (D1) and nonD1
  • D1 teams are subdivided into BCS and nonBSC
  • Quality of teams is not a factor; thus playing Indiana counts the same as playing Ohio State; thus equally count as a Big 10 opponent
  • The 2010 schedule has 259 OOC games

The Basic Facts
Fact 1: Of the 259 OOC games, better than one-fifth (22.4%) are against nonD1 opponents and slightly more than one-third (33.4%) are against BCS teams

Fact 2: 56 of 66 (84.8%) play at least one game against a nonD1 opponent, including two playing two games (Virginia and Arizona State).

Fact 3: 10 of 66 (15.2%) play a full D1 OOC: Cheers to Colorado, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Texas, UCLA, USC, Washington, and Vanderbilt (even though schedule quality is a different question)

Fact 4: Using the 2010 averages (orange) as a baseline, Big 12 clearly has the highest rating of D1 games and the ACC the lowest; the other conferences cluster around the average.

Fact 5: Six teams fail to play any BCS Conferences opponents in their OOC. Shame to Baylor, Indiana, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Texas Tech, and Va. Tech.

Below are the numbers for yourself. What about the five-year trends? Well, that’s tomorrow’s post. Stay tuned.