First Look at the Schedules

July 12, 2015

It's hardly worth revisiting my usual rant about schedule topology. Suffice to say that the overall D1A schedule looks a lot like last year's. Only 22 teams will have half the field or better as opponents or opponents' opponents. (See Division 1A Team Connectivity for the breakdown by team.)

The problem is that too many of the non-conference scheduling opportunities are spent on home games against division 1AA teams. Only 27 of 128 D1A teams play a 12-game D1A schedule. Army, BC and UNC only play 10.

D1A Interconference Games

Some random observations:

• The D1A teams have 304 home non-conference games and travel for 205 (eight of which are at a neutral-site.)
• Both teams are D1A for 201 games.
• 107 of the home games are against non-1AA opponents.
• 511 games are D1A conference games.
• The 65 "Big 5+Notre Dame" teams play 38 NC games against each other, 119 against other D1A teams, and 52 against non-D1A teams.
• The other 63 teams in D1A play 48 games against each other and 55 games against non-D1A teams.

One consequence of scheduling like this is that there aren't many non-conference games between top teams. The only "four star" game on the schedule is Oregon at Michigan State on September 12^th. Other than that, all of the matchups between teams that finished in the top 25 last year are conference games.

Here's the same chart as above with the 1AA conferences listed individually.

Division 1 Interconference Games