Preseason Poll Nonsense

Preseason polls in college football are completely meaningless and even more so now that the BCS is finally dead (YEA!) and a committee will select the four teams for the College Football Playoff.  Yet, uninformed dolts, like Clay Travis, keep citing them as if they mean something and/or are important.   Here's an example that was posted just after the AP preseason poll came out:  "Auburn has seven opponents ranked in the AP top 25.  Ohio State has one."  While factually correct, the statistic is meaningless at this point in the season.  Citing that statistic now as proof of the narrative that the schedule Auburn will play is much more difficult than that of Ohio State is complete nonsense.  And when these (false) narratives are established early in the season they carry on even when the results at the end of the season prove them false. 

Case in point:  2012 Notre Dame.  Notre Dame's 2012 schedule included 5 teams ranked in the AP Top 25 preseason poll including USC (#1 )--lolz, Oklaoma (#4), Michigan (#8), Michigan State (#13), Stanford (#21) in addition to in addition to unranked but perennially decent teams Miami & BYU.   That's 3 teams in the top 10, 4 in the top 13 and 5 in the top 21, a venerable murderer's row.  Any team who could navigate that difficult schedule would clearly be one of the best in the country.  <NOT!>  The rankings in the final AP Top 25?  #7 (Stanford), #15 (Oklahoma) & #24 (Michigan).  So ND had beaten 1 top 10 team, 2 top 15 teams and 3 top 25 teams.  To quote Homer Simpson, "That's good but not great."  But the perception had already been established that Notre Dame played a brutal schedule and thus, coming out of it undefeated was quite the accomplishment.  Fortunately, Bama proved that was not the case.  So please, stop making judgments/statements about how easy or difficult a team's resume is until AFTER the season has ended and we have a full picture of the actual level of difficulty.   

SEC columnists are jealous of the Big Ten?

Last May, the SEC announced it would start its own conference channel, the SEC Network (SECN), following in the footsteps of the Big Ten (B1G), Midwest Conference (MWC) and the Pac-12 (P12).  The channel is set to launch in about one month on August 14, 2014 and has currently secured deals with several major cable/satellite providers including U-Verse, Dish Network and most recently, Cox.  Every time another major provider signs on, there are updates about the number of subscribers who will have the SECN available to them.  Constantly updating this running tally makes sense, except there’s one thing that always seems to be mentioned with the tally: the number of subscribers the Big Ten Network (BTN) had at launch.  Why?

Example 1:  When it was announced on July 9^th that Cox Cable had signed on to carry the SECN, Barrett Sallee (CFB writer on Bleacher Report, yes I know…) tweeted “The addition of Cox brings the @SECNetwork to around 26 million homes. The Big Ten Network had 16 million the day it launched.” Interesting.

Example 2:  Brandon Marcello (Auburn beat writer for AL.com), in an article from July 11^thabout the SECN in general and its experience in gaining carriage agreements, wrote “The SEC Network has secured about 26 million homes so far, surpassing the 14 million homes the Big Ten Network secured when it launched in 2007. More announcements are likely on the way…”.  Notice that both statements are almost identical except that Marcello somehow incorrectly states the number of homes BTN was available to at launch as 14 million (link showing correct # of subscribers at launch).  (Editor’s Note: I reached out to him on Twitter regarding this error but have not received a response).  Again, interesting.

So this begs the question.  Why are SEC-centered college football writers constantly comparing the number of subscribers the SECN is currently available to (leading up to its launch) to the number that BTN was available to at its launch?  Are they jealous?  Are they secretly obsessed with the B1G?  Both?  I honestly don’t know, but it seems extremely peculiar considering that the circumstances surrounding the launch of both networks are hardly similar.

*BTN was launched in 2007 while the SECN is being launched in 2014 in a completely different media and broadcast landscape

*BTN was the first tv channel of a major FBS conference (the MWC launched a tv network a year earlier but its carriage was very low before shutting down in 2012) while SECN will be the third major conference tv channel (BTN 1^st in 2007, Pac-12 Network (P12N) 2^nd in 2012)
*BTN had Fox Sports backing it (which at the time had only a minimal interest in CFB by televising the BCS games and the Cotton Bowl) while the SECN has the full weight of ESPN (i.e. Disney) behind it.

So given those 3 major differences, it makes absolutely no sense to repeatedly compare the number of subscribers SECN will have at launch to the number that BTN had.  Additionally, the number of cable & satellite subscribers is not constant, similar to how inflation changes the value of a dollar over time.  So just giving raw subscriber totals without adjusting for overall subscription levels is misleading as well (i.e. there were ~ 96 million cable + satellite subscribers in 2007, but ~ 100 million subscribers in 2014, ).  Therefore, anyone who compares the number of possible SECN subscribers at its launch to the number of possible subscribers BTN had at launch is either dishonest or foolish.  Or both.

 

Which brings me back to Barrett Sallee.  In response to several people calling out his misleading post on Twitter, he said "Just putting into perspective the success of SEC Networkpre-launch..." and "Just putting a little perspective on it..."  To quote Joe Biden "Are you joking? Is this a joke?"  Here you have a guy who cited two absolute figures (26 million & 16 million) without accounting for any of the multitude of factors listed above which make the situations completely different (and frankly incomparable).  Then when called out on it, he says that he is offering perspective.  Someone please cue up Borat ***NOT***.  He's doing the exact opposite of "putting a little perspective on it".  First, the BTN launch subscriber numbers shouldn't even be cited anywhere in relation to the SECN numbers unless you were doing a historical comparison with subscriber numbers of ALL conference networks that have launched over the years.  Second, if they are cited, they need to be prefaced with statements like "completely different time 7 years ago," or "completely different media landscape 7 years ago" or "first of its kind tv network for a major conference".  In other words, Barrett Sallee is doing the exact opposite of putting the numbers in perspective by choosing to arbitrarily compare the SECN to BTN instead of say, to the P12N.  The launch of the P12N would be a much more analogous situation to the launch of the SECN since it only launched two years ago and came along after it was proven that a television network devoted solely to a major college athletic conference could survive (and be profitable).  Yet, not a single article/tweet/story compares the SECN to the P12N.  Why?

 

The 8 vs 9 conference game fallacy

           Ever since the College Football Playoff was announced there has been a never-ending debate about conferences, specifically the Power 5, playing 8 vs 9 conference games.   The Big 12 went to a 9-game full round-robin conference schedule in 2011 after Nebraska & Colorado bolted while the Pac-12 kept its 9-game conference schedule after it expanded the same year.  The Big Ten last year announced it would switch to a 9-game conference schedule starting in 2016, two years after it expanded (again) to 14 total teams.  However, this spring both the ACC & SEC decided to stay at 8 conference games for the near future (Note: the ACC did setup a scheduling alliance with Notre Dame in 2013 where it would play five games vs ND each year but those games would not count as conference games).   With the College Football Playoff set to begin this year (finally!) the 8 vs 9 conference game debate has been taken over by idiots and has focused on all the wrong issues.  Allow me to explain.
                The 8 vs 9 conference game debate is generally meaningless for two reasons.   First, the conferences themselves have varying levels of ability.  It’s generally been true that over the last 5-7 years the SEC has been the strongest conference followed by the Pac-12 and then some combination of the Big 12, Big Ten, and ACC (Note: While there were some years that the case could be made for the Big East being stronger than one or more of those conferences, the American does not appear to be such going forward).  You could also make a legitimate argument that in top to bottom strength the Pac-12 was better than the SEC last year.  But the point is, you can’t say with certainty that a team which played a 9-game conference schedule should be ranked ahead of a team who played an 8-game conference schedule without considering the quality (or lack thereof) of both conferences.  Also, you can’t reasonably compare schedules without looking at the specific teams played within the conference, which brings me to the second point.  You can’t accurately compare an 8-game vs a 9-game conference schedule (or any two schedules for that matter) without looking at the actual teams on the schedule (Note: In a separate post, I will expand further upon this idea, specifically the one situation where an 8 vs 9 game conference schedule actually matters).  For teams that play in a conference with divisions (every Power 5 conference except the Big 12), the crossover opponents from the other division (2 or 3) and the strength of a team’s division (which can vary greatly year to year, see SEC East 2012 vs 2013) have much more weight in determining the strength of a team’s conference schedule than solely the number of conference games played.  Yet, analysts and media personalities repeatedly discuss how an 8 vs 9 game conference schedule will affect a team’s ability to make the College Football Playoff while completely ignoring the factors mentioned above.
                Finally, there is one factor that is being completely overlooked by ignorant analysts (Trevor Matich & Joe Schad, I’m looking at you).  Frequently, the Big 12 & SEC are compared in that the Big 12 plays 9 conference games vs the 8 for the SEC; additionally, the SEC has a conference championship game in addition to 12 regular season games.  Thus, we frequently hear the conclusion that the SEC’s schedule is tougher or better than that of a Big 12 team due to having a conference championship game.  However, if you compare the SEC CG winner vs the Big 12 Champion you have the following:  13 total games vs 12, 9 conference games vs 9, and the only difference is the number of non-conference games at 4 vs 3.  Thus, when you’re comparing the Big 12 Champion to the SEC Champion, the only difference is one extra non-conference game.   Now, obviously as was mentioned earlier, when comparing the resumes of two teams one should look at a bunch of factors (overall strength of conference, the specific teams played—or not played, etc).  However, another factor that needs to be remembered, but which you never hear discussed, is that the difference between these resumes is simply a single non-conference game, most likely against a non-Power 5 or FCS team.  So to claim that 2014 Alabama deserves to be selected ahead of say,2014 Oklahoma, for the CFP because Bama played in a conference championship game and Oklahoma didn’t is ludicrous as they each played 9 conference games.  Bama’s 4 non-conference opponents are from Conference USA (2), Big 12 and the FCS while Oklahoma’s are from the SEC, Conference USA and the American.  So (again, ignoring the overall strength of each team) does the fact that Bama blew out an FCS team in a 13^th game make its overall resume better than  Oklahoma’s 12 game resume?  Of course not, yet no one ever mentions this.  Except here. 

Oliver Luck understands the fiscal insanity of the BCS & Bowl Games

During a weather delay in the WVU-Marshall game on September 4, 2011, Oliver Luck spoke to the WVU Mountaineer Radio guys.  One of the topics that came up was bowl games including the millions of dollars colleges waste to attend bowl games.  Oliver Luck gets it.  So when you hear Bill Hancock or any other BCS mouthpiece claiming that "..the presidents and the coaches and the ADs support what we have..", that person is lying.  Blatantly.

2011 OOC Scheduling - SEC! SEC! SEC!

Fresh off a record-setting 2010 season with regards to Out-of-Conference (OOC) schedules, more on that here *1, the 2011 college football season will be here is less than a month. And with it will be even weaker OOC schedules and more records for cupcake scheduling.

First, let’s look at some overall highlights or rather lowlights. 2011 will be the first time in history that all 6 AQ conferences play at least 20% (1 in 5) of their OOC games against FCS schools. Related to this, 22.7% of all OOC games played will be against FCS schools, a record for the 4th consecutive season. Also, three conferences (ACC, Big East, SEC) will have every single team play at least 1 game versus an FCS school, another record. Lastly, 3 conferences (Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC) will set records for the number of OOC games played versus FCS teams, although it should be noted that both the Big 10 and Pac-12 added teams for the 2011 season. Now let’s recognize some individual conferences for their achievements.

They’ve won 5 straight BCS Championships and you don’t achieve that level of success by playing quality fellow AQ opponents on a regular basis. The SEC will join the Big 12 (2006) and Big 10 (2010) as the only conferences to play at least as many OOC games versus FCS schools, twelve, as versus fellow AQ schools, twelve) *2. Additionally, 2011 will mark the first year that every SEC team plays an OOC game versus an FCS school. Finally, the SEC will play exactly 25% of its OOC games against FCS schools—another record. With three records in one-year, they don’t call the SEC the best conference in college football for nothing.

Just like the regular season product, the other conferences just don’t match up to the SEC in 2011. While the ACC and Big East didn’t set any records for OOC scheduling in 2011, it does mark the 3rd consecutive year that each conference will have every team play at least one game versus an FCS team. The Big Ten also didn’t set any new records but its 10 games versus FCS schools ties the record it set in 2010, although this year it does have one more team (12) than last year (11). The Big 12 is a mixed bag as its percentage of games vs FCS schools, 20%, will be the highest since 2008; however, the same is true for its percentage of games vs fellow AQ schools.

The most disappointing conference has to be the Pac-12. Traditionally, it has been the gold standard in terms of scheduling quality opponents instead of cupcakes. It played the highest % of OOC games against AQ schools the last two years (50%-2008, 48%-2010). It has the lowest average percentage of OOC games against FCS schools since 2006, when the 12 game regular season became standard, at 14.3%. It has three of the four teams (USC, UCLA, Notre Washington, Note Dame) who have never played an FCS school *3. But, oh how the mighty have fallen. The 22% of OOC games against FCS teams in 2011 falls just short of the 23% record the Pac-12 set in 2010. Additionally, the league added two teams this year, and five additional OOC games *4, yet the total number of OOC games versus AQ schools, 15, stayed the same as last year. Finally, from 2007-2009, the league played a total of 8 OOC games against FCS schools; in 2011, the league will play an identical number of games against FCS schools.

Although the results for 2011 aren’t quite as bad as they were for 2010 or in 2009 when I first looked at OOC scheduling, the indicators are still very clear. AQ schools love scheduling easy OOC games against FCS schools, oftentimes at the expense of games against fellow AQ schools. We’ve now crossed the threshold where, after 2011, half of the AQ conferences will have had seasons where every member plays an OOC game against an FCS team and seasons in which the number of OOC games against FCS teams is equal to or greater than the number of OOC games played against fellow AQs.

Percentage of OOC Games versus AQ, FBS Non-AQ, and FCS teams in 2011

2011	AQ	FBS NON-AQ	FCS
ACC	44	29	27
BIG EAST	40	40	20
BIG 10	29	50	21
BIG 12	30	50	20
PAC 10	42	36	22
SEC	25	50	25

Footnotes
*1-http://playoffsolution.blogspot.com/2011/08/2010-record-year-for-aq-schools-ooc.html
*2-Note: Notre Dame is not considered an AQ school for this statistic though it was for all the percentage calculations
*3-This will become two teams of the remaining three after 2011 as Washington is scheduled to play Eastern Washington on Sept 3.
"Notre Dame, USC and UCLA last holdouts from college football's cupcake feast", The Oregonian, April 9, 2011
*4-Cal and Colorado are playing this year but it is not considered a conference game due to existing contracts that were in place before the Pac-12 expanded. Thus, technically there were only five additional OOC games added instead of six; even though this game appears on both teams schedules it can only be counted once as it is only one actual game being played.

2010 a Record Year for AQ Schools OOC Scheduling

2010 was a record setting year for college football. And I’m not just talking about the legal gymnastics the NCAA exhibited to clear several high profile players.

To follow up on my earlier study, where I examined out of conference (OOC) scheduling for the 6 Automatic Qualifying (AQ) conferences since the creation of the BCS, I looked at the 2010 regular season to see if the disturbing trend toward scheduling cupcakes for OOC games continued. Did it?? Of course it did!

*All conferences except the Big 12 and the SEC decreased the % of OOC games played against fellow AQ schools in 20101

*Every conference except the Big 12 played nearly 1 in 4 of its OOC games against an FCS school

*Three conferences (Big 10, Pac-10, SEC) played the highest % of OOC games against FCS schools ever

*The Big 10 became only the 2nd conference ever (Big 12 – 2005) to play more games against FCS schools (10) than against fellow AQ conference schools (9)2

*The Big 10 and Pac-10 each played more than 20% of their OOC games against FCS opponents for the first time ever

*Among all 6 conferences, 22.4% (58 of 259) of all OOC games were played against FCS schools, which marked the third consecutive year a record was set in this category

Percentage of OOC Games versus AQ, FBS Non-AQ, and FCS teams in 2010

2010	AQ	FBS NON-AQ	FCS
ACC	40	33	27
BIG EAST	38	40	23
BIG 10	27	50	23
BIG 12	25	58	17
PAC 10	48	29	23
SEC	33	44	23

Footnotes:
1 – Similar to the earlier study, games against Notre Dame were included in the AQ category for % calculation purposes

2 – Notre Dame was excluded from this calculation and only schools in the 6 AQ conferences were used

The 2010 Orange Bowl-Bare Midriffs, Time Share Tactics, and Attendance Woes

Editor's Note:  A version of this post appeared on Playoff Pac's Blog here.

On March 8, 2010, the BCS Twitter page (http://twitter.com/insidethebcs) proclaimed “Another banner year of TV ratings and attendance highlight America’s passion for college football”.( 1) However, if one read the article they linked to (available here), there was conspicuously little coverage of the Orange Bowl among the list of “Bowl Ratings Highlights” and “2008-09 Notable Bowl Facts and Milestones”. The only mention it received was in the “Bowl’s boasting double digit growth in viewership included:” section where it was noted that its television viewership increased by 17%. In fact, the strength of ticket sales were mentioned for the other 3 original BCS bowls (Fiesta, Sugar, Rose), but not for the Orange Bowl. Given the recent trouble the Fiesta Bowl has experienced, I decided to look into the Orange Bowl and the view was not pretty.


While the television viewership of the Orange Bowl was up 17%, as mentioned earlier, ticket sales were not. The Orange Bowl had an announced attendance of 66,131 (2), which besides not being a sellout for the first time in 9 years, missed the sellout mark by a significant margin (Note: it’s good that bowl games don’t have NFL style blackout rules—more on this in a minute). Sun Life Stadium has a capacity of 75,000 for football games (3); thus, the stadium was only 88.1% full for one of college football’s 5 major BCS games. Now we don’t want to denigrate the lovely fans of Iowa or Georgia Tech, but does anyone truly believe that those two teams would have played in front of stadium that was less than 90% full if the winner got to play another game to advance towards a national championship in addition to just a trophy full of oranges? Or that if either team hosted the game on campus only 88% of the stands would be full? For the record, the last NFL playoff game to not sellout, and consequently be blacked out in the local television viewing market, was January 13, 2002 when Miami hosted Baltimore (4). Of course the poor economy played a part in this decline in ticket sales, but let’s take a look at some other potential reasons, specifically the Orange Bowl’s current marketing strategy and leadership.

The Orange Bowl’s marketing plan to attract local fans to purchase tickets in 2009 was fairly simple: feature attractive young females in face paint showing their bare midriffs along with the enticing promise of being able to purchase tickets to the BCS Championship game---in 2013. Yes, come out to the Orange Bowl so that you can meet hot girls showing off their painted stomachs. And we’ll also throw in the right to purchase tickets to a game that doesn’t happen for another 3 years. It’s no wonder that in the offseason the Orange Bowl committee decided to create a “..multi-tiered strategy to increase declining ticket sales..” (article here). This included hiring a Vice President of Ticket Sales and Operations in addition to hiring more ticket office employees and creating a program where corporate clients will be required to refer the names of other businesses to the Orange Bowl. According to Eric Poms, the Orange Bowl Committee CEO, “A new membership requirement is to have each new member provide us with two contacts in the business community. Then we will prepare ticket packages and visit each employer.” (article here) Does that sound similar to how timeshare presentations work to anyone else? Let’s give the Orange Bowl credit for something though; the new VP of Ticket Sales, Dawson Hughes, has experience working with the Kansas City Royals, a Major League Baseball franchise with a history of poor attendance.

The performance of any organization usually starts at the top and one need look no further than the leadership of the Orange Bowl. Flashback to December 2007. You might be wondering how Ohio State just got selected for the BCS Championship Game despite losing its next to last game of the regular season to Illinois (remember, every week is a playoff in the regular season), but that’s another discussion for another day. The real controversy among the BCS selections was the fact that Kansas got chosen ahead of Missouri for an at-large bid and a spot in the 2008 Orange Bowl. This selection was interesting due to several reasons: Missouri and Kansas had identical regular season records (not including the Big 12 Championship Game), Kansas’ record was due in part to a relatively weak schedule that did not include Texas or Oklahoma or Texas Tech (in fact they had not played a single ranked team until they played Missouri), and most importantly, Missouri beat Kansas during the playoff regular season. Now maybe, despite those factors, the Orange Bowl honchos wanted Kansas because officials figured they would travel better than Missouri or they felt Kansas deserved the opportunity more given their paucity of bowl appearances, 10, at the time compared to Missouri’s 24. Those reasons are at worst, understandable, and at best, justifiable. But that was not what the Orange Bowl leadership looked at according to CEO Eric Poms, "Having a one-loss team compared to a two-loss team was the most pressing thing we looked at. At the end of the day, that was our thought process.'' (5) Ignoring the fact that both of Missouri’s losses came against Oklahoma, who Kansas never played, one can’t help but wonder how earning the right to play for the Big 12 Championship (and a guaranteed BCS bid) can hurt a team’s BCS chances. Let’s examine the logic. Missouri beats Kansas 36-28, to earn a spot in the Big 12 Championship game where it loses to Oklahoma for the 2nd time. This loss drops Missouri’s record to 12-2 which, while statistically worse than Kansas’ 12-1, was not competitively worse as Missouri had only lost (twice) to a team that Kansas had never played and they had also beaten Kansas head-to-head. With logic like that, it’s no wonder we routinely see BCS officials making ridiculous claims like “at the start of the season, every team has an equal chance to play for a national championship”

Now let’s return to the present with current President and Chair of the Orange Bowl Committee, Phillis Oeters. Oeters wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in the Miami Herald on January 3, 2010 (link here) deploring the idea of a playoff in college football. The letter featured many of the common anti-playoff myths: “Simply put, a playoff would end the bowls as we know them…”, fans would not be able to travel to multiple neutral-site playoff games, “But with 34 bowl games, 34 teams end the year successfully.”, and “In a playoff, teams will only spend one night in town, as opposed to a week..” Ignoring the fact that there have been numerous playoff proposals which keep some of the bowls and even incorporate the BCS games as a part of the playoff, one must start to wonder if the letter wasn’t secretly written by BCS chief Bill Hancock as he used every single one of those misleading claims in his infamous interview on the Dan Patrick Show in November 2009. However, the most unusual parts of the letter came towards the end. Oeters said that during bowl games “Universities meet with donors and raise money to support their academic programs. A playoff would destroy that.” Ignoring the veiled implication that playoff proponents are not concerned with supporting academics on college campuses, the idea that university donors would not attend playoff games is simply laughable. Immediately after that, Oeters stated “So if the bowl system works, is part of American culture and creates economic opportunity for communities and colleges around the country, why would we want to get rid of it?” The problem with Oeters hypothesis is that while bowls are clearly part of American culture and create economic opportunity—although not for many schools that participate in them due to mandated ticket sales and other requirements—the bowl system clearly does not work. But that could also depend on what one’s definition of “work” is. Does the bowl system provide players with an opportunity for a glorified exhibition game where they receive bags of expensive merchandise for free? Does the bowl system allow some teams weeklong vacations in tropical climates? The answer to both questions is clearly yes. However, the most important question in my view is this: Does the bowl system help determine college football’s FBS “national champion” based primarily on actual on-field performance (not conference affiliation or preseason ranking or computer models) from a pool of multiple teams with similar records or regular season achievements? The answer is a resounding no, which is why the both Orange Bowl and the BCS are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

An Analysis of AQ OOC Scheduling 1998-2009: More FCS Please!

Editor's Note:  This is the long, detailed analysis of Out of Conference Scheduling for teams from AQ conferences since the inception of the BCS in 1998.  A much shorter summary with the highlights appeared on Playoff PAC here.

Editor's Note Part 2:  The Big Ten 2009 FBS non-AQ & FCS %'s were originally reported incorrectly.  Those numbers have been corrected as have the corresponding averages based which include that year of data.

Editor's Note Part 3:  Some Pac-10 %'s were originally reported incorrectly.  Those numbers have been corrected as have the corresponding averages (8/7/11).

A common college football myth holds that the superiority and excitement of the regular season exists because of the absence of a multiple-team playoff.¹  But consider Week #12 from the 2009 season.  Remarkably, only one top-25 team played a game against another top-25 team. Meanwhile, top-ranked Florida played an out-of-conference (OOC) game against a Sun Belt School with 3 wins (FIU) while 2nd-ranked Alabama sweated it out with an FCS team (Chattanooga).  Is this what college football fans expect from the “most exciting regular season in sports”?

Of course, picking one week at random is by no means an appropriate measure of the overall excitement for the regular season.  However, these particularly weak OOC matchups for the top 2 teams made us start thinking about OOC games in general. 

The specific target for the empirical analysis is how OOC scheduling by the teams in the six AQ conferences has changed since the start of the BCS era in 1998.  Additionally, the trends over the last four years were examined as 2006 marked both the start of a standard 12 game regular season in addition to the creation of a 5th BCS game—thus resulting in an increase in the number of at-large BCS slots by 50% from two to four.  Specifically, I wanted to see what has happened to the number of OOC games played versus fellow AQ teams, versus FBS non-AQ teams and versus FCS teams.  After all, when “every week is a playoff,” one crucial loss may keep a team out of the Title Game or out of a BCS Bowl.  In line with our hypothesis, the results of our empirical analysis show a marked shift in OOC scheduling since 1998.  Apparently, to cope with a sport where one loss eliminates the possibility of a title, teams respond by scheduling Chattanooga and other patsies.

I classified every OOC game from 1998-2009 for every team that was in one of the six AQ conferences at any time during that period into one of three categories: AQ, non-AQ FBS, and FCS based on the opponents’ status.  Notre Dame was grouped into the “AQ” category given its separate BCS eligibility rules and its automatic BCS payout regardless of its BCS bowl qualification status.
 

Percentage of OOC games vs. AQ schools

CONF	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	AVG
ACC	64	50	46	47	48	58	44	44	33	46	48	42	47.5
BIG EAST	44	48	31	39	44	40	43	38	44	38	39	40	40.7
BIG 10	38	43	44	45	38	52	45	42	32	30	30	32	39.3
BIG 12	29	34	29	22	35	31	22	19	23	23	31	23	26.8
PAC 10	47	33	39	40	43	45	42	32	42	35	45	50	41.1
SEC	25	22	19	25	35	35	22	28	35	29	31	30	28

The table above shows that four of the six conferences were fairly consistent in the % of games played versus fellow AQ schools while both the ACC and Big 10 showed fairly significant downward trends.  However, the ACC still had the 2nd highest % of games against fellow AQ schools in 2009 and the highest overall average OOC AQ % over the period at 47.5%.  Interestingly the three conferences with the lowest average %’s, the Big 12 (26.8%), SEC (28%), and Big Ten (39.3%), also received the largest number of BCS at-large bids.  Those conferences have received a whopping 21 of the 23 BCS at-large bids awarded to AQ schools (note: Notre Dame is not included in this calculation).  Consequently, the Big 12 and SEC have averaged close to 3/4 of their OOC games against FBS non-AQ schools and FCS schools over the past 12 seasons and in several years reached nearly 80%.

Percentage of OOC games vs. FBS non-AQ schools

CONF	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	AVG
ACC	21	39	43	40	45	31	41	47	48	40	23	29	37.3
BIG EAST	44	42	63	58	44	55	43	34	40	48	44	35	45.8
BIG 10	59	51	56	52	55	43	52	52	50	52	50	48	51.7
BIG 12	63	58	63	59	52	54	67	58	54	60	48	58	57.8
PAC 10	53	64	58	53	45	50	55	48	42	58	48	37	50.9
SEC	67	69	72	64	55	54	64	53	48	52	50	49	58.1

Percentage of OOC games vs. FCS schools

CONF	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	AVG
ACC	14	11	11	13	8	11	15	8	19	15	29	29	15.3
BIG EAST	13	9	6	3	12	5	15	19	15	15	17	25	12.8
BIG 10	3	6	0	3	6	5	3	6	18	18	20	20	9.0
BIG 12	8	8	8	19	13	15	11	22	23	17	21	19	15.3
PAC 10	0	3	3	7	13	5	3	19	16	6	6	13	7.8
SEC	8	8	8	11	10	10	14	19	17	19	19	21	13.7

For the non-AQ and FCS games, a clear trend emerged: in recent years, teams have scheduled more and more games against FCS schools.  Games against FCS schools were almost non-existent in the late 90’s and early 2000’s; however, over time, this “patsy scheduling” trend expanded to the currently high levels of about 20% of OOC games among all the conferences.   For some conferences (Big 12, Big 10) these games have come at the expense of AQ games, while others (ACC, Big East, SEC) have traded FBS non-AQ opponents for FCS ones.  Four of the six conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, SEC) saw a record % of OOC games against FCS teams occur in 2009. 

Another area to examine was what has happened in the last four years (2006-2009) compared to the first eight years (1998-2005) of the BCS era, since the NCAA expanded to a standard 12 game regular season at the FBS level in beginning in 2006 (2).  It should be noted that many teams played regular seasons of 12 or more games prior to 2006 due to a variety of factors. First, in 2002 and 2003, most FBS teams played a standard 12 game regular season due to existing NCAA rule 17.9.5.1.  This bylaw allowed for twelve regular season games in any year “in which there are 14 Saturdays from the first permissible playing date through the last playing date in November.”².   Second, the NCAA previously exempted games played as a preseason “kickoff classic” game from the regular season playing limit restrictions.  Third, road games played against institutions based in Hawaii or Alaska are also granted exceptions to the regular season playing limit according to NCAA rule 17.5.9.2 section (k). 

AVERAGE % of OOC Games Against AQ schools Before/After 12 Gm Regular Season

CONF	1998-2009	1998-2005	2006-09	Difference
ACC	47.5	50.1	42.3	-7.9
BIG EAST	40.7	40.9	40.3	-0.6
BIG 10	39.3	43.4	31.0	-12.4
BIG 12	26.8	27.6	25.0	-2.6
PAC 10	41.1	40.1	43.0	2.9
SEC	28.0	26.4	31.3	4.9

AVERAGE % of OOC Games Against FBS non-AQ schools Before/After 12 Gm Regular Season

CONF	1998-2009	1998-2005	2006-09	Difference
ACC	37.3	38.4	35.0	-3.4
BIG EAST	45.8	47.9	41.8	-6.1
BIG 10	51.7	52.5	50.0	-2.5
BIG 12	57.8	59.3	55.0	-4.3
PAC 10	50.9	53.3	46.3	-7.0
SEC	58.1	62.3	49.8	-12.5

On the AQ side, when comparing the % of OOC games versus AQ opponents from these two categories, the results were mixed.  The Big East was virtually unchanged (-.6%), while the ACC (-9.8%), Big Ten (12.4%), and Big 12 (-2.6%) all saw decreases.  However, the Pac-10 and SEC increased their % of OOC games against AQ schools by 2.9% and 4.9% respectively.  Every single conference saw a drop in the average % of OOC games played against FBS non-AQ schools with particularly large drops from the SEC (-12.5%) and Pac-10 (-7.0%).  But the most telling data was that from the OOC games played against the FCS schools (as seen below) in recent years. 

AVERAGE % of OOC Games Against FCS schools Before/After 12 Gm Regular Season

CONF	1998-2009	1998-2005	2006-09	Difference
ACC	15.3	11.4	23.0	11.6
BIG EAST	12.8	10.3	18.0	7.8
BIG 10	9.0	4.0	19.0	15.0
BIG 12	15.3	13.0	20.0	7.0
PAC 10	7.8	6.6	10.3	3.7
SEC	13.7	11.0	19.0	8.0

From 2006-2009, every conference except the PAC-10 has averaged nearly 1 out of 5 OOC games against FCS opponents.  Every conference increased the average % of games compared to the first eight years of the BCS era with the Big Ten (+15%) and ACC (+11.6%) leading the way.  The Big Ten example is particularly telling because from 1998-2005, they averaged playing an FCS team in 1 out of every 25 OCC games (lowest average % among all the conferences) while from 2006-2009 this average was 1 out of every 5.3 games.  This increase in scheduling FCS teams is also a byproduct of two additional factors.  First, the NCAA rule 18.7.2.2.1 which allows one win against FCS schools (which meet certain scholarship criteria) to count towards the 6 victories needed for bowl eligibility every year.²  Second, the increased competitiveness of FBS non-AQ schools against AQ schools during both regular season and post-season games.  Therefore, I frankly don’t blame the AQ teams.  Under the current format where teams repeatedly hear that “every week is a playoff”, what incentive is there for a team to increase its chance of losing (and thus being “eliminated”) by scheduling harder opponents (AQ and FBS non-AQ schools).  Especially when you consider that many FCS teams will gladly travel to play a road game without any requirement of a future home game, common among AQ school agreements, due to the large amounts of cash they receive to take a beating (Note: don’t tell this to Boise State who has had trouble scheduling AQ teams for this type of agreement in 2011).

As mentioned above, in 2002 and 2003 and 2006-2009 almost all teams played at least 12 games in the regular season so it might be more relevant to compare what happened to OOC scheduling in those years versus 1998-2001 and 2004-2005 (when teams were permitted to schedule a maximum of 11 regular season games not including Hawaii and pre-season kickoff exceptions).  The averages for each of the three groups, as seen in the tables below, were much smaller than those found by comparing the first eight years of the BCS to the past four.

AVERAGE % of OOC Games vs. AQ schools in 11 Game vs. 12 Game Regular Seasons

CONF	11 GM RS	12 GM RS	Difference
ACC	49.2	45.8	-3.3
BIG EAST	40.5	40.8	0.3
BIG 10	42.8	35.7	-7.2
BIG 12	25.8	27.7	1.8
PAC 10	38.8	43.3	4.5
SEC	23.5	32.5	9.0

AVERAGE % of OOC Games vs. FBS non-AQ schools in 11 Game vs. 12 Game Regular Seasons

CONF	11 GM RS	12 GM RS	Difference
ACC	38.5	36.0	-2.5
BIG EAST	47.3	44.3	-3.0
BIG 10	53.7	49.7	-4.0
BIG 12	61.3	54.3	-7.0
PAC 10	55.2	46.7	-8.5
SEC	64.8	51.3	-13.5

AVERAGE % of OOC Games vs. FCS schools in 11 Game vs. 12 Game Regular Seasons

CONF	11 GM RS	12 GM RS	Difference
ACC	12.0	18.5	6.5
BIG EAST	10.8	14.8	4.0
BIG 10	3.5	14.5	11.0
BIG 12	12.7	18.0	5.3
PAC 10	5.8	9.8	4.0
SEC	11.3	16.0	4.7

The averages for the % of OOC games against AQ schools trended the same direction as the pre/post-2006 averages for every conference except the Big 12 and Big East.  The Big 12 and Big East both went from decreasing average %’s to increasing average %’s while the Big Ten only had a decrease of 7.2% of AQ OOC games compared to its 12.4% decrease when comparing pre-2006 versus post-2006.  Additionally the SEC showed an increase in the % of OOC games played versus AQ schools of 9%.  Similarly every conference showed a decrease in the % of OOC games played versus FBS non-AQ schools, but 4 of the 6 six conferences decreased by a larger amount than the pre-2006 and post-2006 averages.

On the FCS side, the results were nearly uniform.  All six conferences played a greater % of their games against FCS opponents in seasons where they played more regular season games, while every conference except the Big Ten (+.1%) saw the difference between the average %’s decreased compared to differences between the pre-2006 and post-2006 numbers.  Thus when comparing apples to apples or years with 12 game regular seasons to those with 11 game regular seasons, the numbers are not quite as bleak but still show an overall trend towards scheduling easier opponents.  Finally, I should mention that I am by no means denigrating the effort and ability FCS schools put up against the big boys.  In recent years, these teams have put up heroic efforts to both nearly defeat AQ Schools (Iowa-Northern Iowa 2009) and grab stunning upsets over AQ schools with five such upsets having already taken place this season.  However, the fact of the matter is that a large majority of FBS versus FCS games are blowouts that usually result in nothing more than a tune-up for the first-string players of the FBS team while at the same time the largest amount of playing time many second and third-string players will see.

Before I conclude, there are a number of things which I should mention regarding the data.  First, the ACC and Big East each experienced membership changes during the past 10 years and these changes should be considered when looking at the %’s for each category.  For example, Miami and Florida State are rivals who have played every year from 1998-2009. Before Miami joined the ACC, this game would have counted as an OOC game for both schools; however, starting in 2004 when Miami & Virginia Tech joined the ACC from the Big East, this game no longer qualified as such since it is now a conference game.  The same is true for the annual Virginia Tech-Virginia rivalry game.  Another thing to consider is ongoing, usually in-state, rivalries which exist between AQ schools.  For example, Georgia & Georgia Tech play every year as do Iowa and Iowa State.  Therefore, these schools generally start each year with at least one OOC game on their schedule against an AQ team and as a result, the numbers mentioned above should be not be viewed in a vacuum without some context.  When considering these rivalry games, the % of OOC games versus AQ opponents for the SEC looks even worse as it usually has at least 3 of these matchups (Georgia-Georgia Tech, UF-FSU, South Carolina-Clemson) every year.  Also, several schools changed status between FBS AQ, FBS non-AQ, and FCS classification.  Again this makes the SEC look even worse with Louisville and Kentucky as an example. They have played every year since 1998 with Louisville counting a non-AQ school for the first seven meetings and as an AQ school for the last five.

Although I’ve examined a large amount of data and broken the numbers down a variety of ways, they all lead to some very simple conclusions regarding how FBS teams from the six AQ conferences construct the three to five OOC games they play each year.  First, since the BCS went into effect in 1998, AQ teams, as a whole, have decreased their % of OOC games played against fellow AQ schools.  Second, teams have played an increasing % of OOC games against FCS schools with three of the six conferences setting records in 2009 at 21%, 25% and 29%.  Third, from 2006-2009, after the NCAA switched to a 12 game regular season and the BCS added a 5th BCS bowl game, teams from all conferences increased the average % of OOC games played versus FCS schools, some by as much as 15%.   Fourth, the Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC have earned 91% of the BCS at-large berths awarded to AQ schools and not coincidentally, have the lowest average % of games versus fellow AQ schools over all three of the time periods I examined.  Last and most importantly, when given the option or mandate of playing an additional regular season game, some conferences increased the average % of OOC games versus fellow AQ schools while some decreased their %, but ALL conferences increased the average % of games played against FCS schools.  Therefore I can’t help but conclude that the current BCS system encourages teams to schedule weaker opponents and reduces the potential for exciting regular season matchups between top quality teams.  Furthermore, an 8 or 12-team playoff would still require near-perfect records for admission while at the same time encouraging AQ schools to schedule tougher OOC games for several reasons.  First, they would help prepare teams for the high level of competition they would face in a postseason playoff.  More importantly they eliminate the level of perfection required for national championship consideration under the current system which has resulted in weaker OOC schedules.   

¹ Bill Hancock, BCS Executive Director, recently said of the FBS regular season, “..we have the best, most compelling regular season of any sport.” http://detnews.com/article/20100731/SPORTS0203/7310341/BCS-chief--Forget-about-playoff-system

² 2010-2011 NCAA Division I Manual - http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D111.pdf