Preliminary 2007 Schedule Strengths

© Copyright 2007, Paul Kislanko

Late July - time for the annual "my schedule is bigger than yours" arguments, fed by filler material from "expert" commentators at the publications with little hard news during the summer.

Most of these are somewhat subjective analyses that take into account only one or two criteria for analyzing a schedule. Simple averages are unsatisfactory, because teams that play vastly different schedules can have the same average. The median opponents' rank does a little better, but teams with a median of 50 might have 5 top-25 teams and #50, or no top-40 teams and six in the 41-50 range.

To account for the distribution of opponents across the top half and bottom half of the field, back in 2005 I came up with something I called a "weighted median." Basically it adjusts the ordinary median by how "top heavy" or "bottom heavy" a schedule is.

The next question is what to use for rankings before any teams have played any games. Until more pre-season rankings are available, the best thing I have to go on is the final 2006 Computer Consensus that Ken Massey publishes. This is the combination of 102 different computer rankings as they were following the bowl championship series.

Here are the top and bottom 25 schedules according to the 2006 rankings and the weighted median ordering. Note that only one team has no opponents outside the top half of the 119 team field. (Trnk is the team's own ranking according to the 2006 computers.)
ix Trnk Team Wtdm Best Med Worst Avg
1 95 Stanford 4.3 4 32 57 32.3
2 33 Kentucky 8.5 1 23 120 46.1
3 26 South Carolina 15.2 1 29 120 47.2
4 56 Washington 20.4 2 32 95 33.5
5 1 Florida 20.7 5 33 120 48.5
6 5 LSU 21.4 1 33 112 48.9
7 23 Georgia 21.9 1 33 120 45.3
8 16 Tennessee 22.0 1 33 93 45.2
9 81 Mississippi St 24.8 5 26 120 46.6
10 115 Duke 27.5 17 39 87 46.8
11 36 Maryland 28.3 9 30 120 53.2
12 54 Alabama 28.6 5 39 120 49.3
13 17 Notre Dame 31.4 4 32 115 49.1
14 9 West Virginia 33.3 3 52 85 50.7
15 67 Vanderbilt 33.6 1 26 120 50.3
16 84 North Carolina St 33.9 3 39 120 52.7
17 87 North Carolina 36.3 19 36 120 55.3
18 71 Mississippi 36.7 1 38 120 52.9
19 51 Miami-Florida 37.3 14 39 119 59.2
20 45 Oklahoma St 38.0 14 40 120 54.3
21 52 Pittsburgh 38.0 3 47 120 55.5
22 28 Nebraska 40.4 4 45 92 49.8
23 37 Oregon 41.7 4 41 95 40.3
24 32 UCLA 42.5 4 37 95 35.8
25 30 Georgia Tech 43.0 17 36 120 57.6
ix Trnk Team Wtdm Best Med Worst Avg
95 47 Navy 85.6 12 79 120 75.8
96 76 New Mexico 87.0 13 79 120 74.8
97 86 Fresno St 87.7 6 57 120 69.3
98 89 UL Lafayette 88.8 16 93 120 82.5
99 61 East Carolina 89.0 9 85 109 72.7
100 101 UL Monroe 89.1 29 70 120 78.7
101 62 Western Michigan 89.3 9 75 120 77.0
102 70 Troy 90.8 1 89 120 74.2
103 83 Ball State 91.2 28 75 120 82.3
104 99 Toledo 92.0 44 72 120 82.7
105 109 Memphis 92.6 49 78 120 82.6
106 94 Kent St 92.8 2 88 120 80.4
107 68 Rice 93.3 18 78 120 72.1
108 104 UAB 94.3 39 77 120 76.0
109 6 Boise St 95.0 27 65 120 79.4
110 43 Houston 95.6 37 78 120 78.8
111 111 Miami-Ohio 95.9 35 83 118 82.4
112 44 Central Michigan 97.2 29 83 120 82.8
113 105 New Mexico St 100.0 6 86 120 75.4
114 53 Nevada 100.0 6 86 120 79.5
115 64 Ohio 100.3 19 99 120 95.3
116 72 Northern Illinois 102.3 8 83 120 79.7
117 57 San Jose St 109.5 6 86 120 77.4
118 108 Bowling Green 109.9 21 94 120 89.6
119 27 Hawaii 137.5 6 105 120 87.3

For all the teams, see the preliminary summary for all 119 Division 1 teams.

Still other factors...

The weighted median of opponents' ranks is about as far as I'm willing to go with a purely programmatic analysis. One could argue that when teams play should matter - playing a top ten team in an opening game is probably a tougher challenge than playing later in the year. And it matters whether the game is at home or on the road. If one were calculating the degree of difficulty of actual schedules at the end of the season there might be a way to adjust for those, but in the case of judging future schedules so many assumptions are required that the results wind up being subjective after all.

Nonetheless, it is interesting to view the lists of opponents' rankings by week and game location. If nothing else the report provides some factual basis for the inevitable arguments.