The 2009 Schedule

© Copyright 2009, Paul Kislanko

I suppose not penalizing FBS teams for playing FCS teams every year is just something we'll have to live with. At least the problem isn't getting worse from year to year. This matters because most good rating systems do a better job if at least half of all team-pairs are no more than an opponents' opponent apart (meaning the paired teams have at least one common opponent.)

Season APL CI #O #OO N3 N4 2006 2.49   Total Pairs 677 2570 3461 313     46.20 Percent 9.60 36.60 49.30 4.50               2007 2.48   Total Pairs 675 2548 3532 266     45.90 Percent 9.60 36.30 50.30 3.80               2008 2.46   Total Pairs 678 2686 3562 214     47.11 Percent 9.50 37.62 49.89 3.00   2009 2.48   Total Pairs 675 2631 3597 237     46.30 Percent 9.45 36.85 50.38 3.32

Only 24 teams are related to more than half the FBS field by no worse than an O-O relatinship. See Distance Matrix by Team for the complete list.

Notice that Rutgers, Kansas St, South Florida, Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina St and Mississippi each have two FCS opponents scheduled. There oughta be a law...

Our favorite bar-fight fodder

Date Visitor Home Locn 3-Sep Oregon @ Boise St 5-Sep Kentucky vs Miami OH (Cincinnati OH) 5-Sep Connecticut @ Ohio U. 5-Sep Brigham Young vs Oklahoma (Arlington TX) 6-Sep Mississippi @ Memphis 11-Sep Colorado @ Toledo 12-Sep Duke @ Army 12-Sep Pittsburgh @ Buffalo 12-Sep Kansas St @ Louisiana-Lafayette 12-Sep Oregon St @ UNLV 12-Sep Kansas @ UTEP 12-Sep South Florida @ Western Kentucky 12-Sep Texas @ Wyoming 12-Sep Hawaii vs Washington St (Seattle WA) 19-Sep Indiana @ Akron 19-Sep Florida St @ Brigham Young 19-Sep Iowa St @ Kent St 19-Sep Virginia @ Southern Miss 19-Sep Ohio State vs Toledo (Cleveland OH) 25-Sep Missouri @ Nevada 26-Sep Texas Tech @ Houston 26-Sep Vanderbilt @ Rice 26-Sep Louisville @ Utah 3-Oct Cincinnati @ Miami OH 10-Oct Vanderbilt @ Army 17-Oct Miami FL @ Central Florida 17-Oct Mississippi St @ Middle Tennessee St 23-Oct Rutgers @ Army 24-Oct Wake Forest @ Navy 5-Nov Virginia Tech @ East Carolina 5-Dec Wisconsin @ Hawaii

There are 113 games scheduled between AQ conference teams and non-AQ conference teams. 31 (27 percent!) are road games for the AQ conference team (or "neutral" site games):

Here's the Complete List.

I don't consider every win by a nonAQ-conference team over an AQ-conference team to be an "upset" but I do see some potential for true upsets in this list. Bet you do, too,

Naturally, almost all of these are in September. There's less of a distinct "pre-(conference)-season" in football than basketball or baseball, but there's enough of it that most of the interconference games come before anybody has a lot of opponents' game film to study.

This is where I add my annual observation that fans of the nonAQ-confererence teams usually make too much of the "they won't play us" and "they won't play at our place" arguments. This year the AQ-conference teams have 220 non-conference scheduling opportunities. They waste 57 of those for home dates vs FCS teams, devote 113 to teams from nonAQ-conferences, leaving 50 for AQ-conference team vs other AQ-conference team.

The AQ-conference teams can't win for losing. If they schedule more games against teams from non-AQ conferences we complain they don't play enough against each other. As I pointed out last year, scheduling is harder than we think.

Our second-favorite bar-fight fodder - Scheduled Interconference Games

Next time I'll look at schedule strengths and for games to really look forward to.