Thursday, December 2, 2010

ND, MI, Oregon and others

7-5 M is currently #43 in the CFRC, while 7-5 Notre Dame is ##25.  And M beat ND!! 

So, I asked myself, is ND's schedule that much more difficult than M's? 

ND has played only 1 team with a losing record (4-8 Purdue in week 1).  That is impressive.  M will surely played a lot more, right?  Not so much.  M played 3 teams with losing records. 

So I'm thinking, "that't normal for the big time schools who pad their non-conference with bad teams and prevent everyone from having losing records, right?"

#1 Oregon has played 7 so far and plays 5-6 Oregon State this week
#2 TCU (not a major conference, but highly ranked) has played 6
#3 Auburn has played 3, plus 3 .500 teams
#4 Stanford (with next year's M coach Jim Harbaugh) has played 7 (3 of those teams could jump up to .500 this weekend)
#5 Ohio State has played 5
#6 Boise St. has played 6 and plays their 7th this week
#7 Oklahoma has played 4
#8 Arkansas has played 4
#9 Wisconsin has played 7
#10 Alabama has played 4

I don't know what it all means, but just by taking WL records, there really is a difference in SOS.  M has played fewer teams with losing records than any of the (CFRC) top 10 teams.  Impressive.

(I hate being impressed by ND, but 1 really is impressive)

2 comments:

  1. It's weird that the Pac 10 has so few teams above .500 this season. That has to be very abnormal for a BCS conference to only have 3-4 teams finish .500 or above. (Big East would need a different number because the conference is so small...)

    It's almost like the Big 10/Big 8 of the 70s.

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  2. Going back to 2002 here are the pct of bowl eligible teams per conference (2010-2002):

    ACC 75/58/83/67/67/67/64/67/78
    B12 67/75/58/67/75/75/58/67/75
    BE 75/75/75/75/75/50/71/75/63
    B10 73/64/64/91/64/64/64/73/64
    CUSA 50/50/50/50/50/50/55/55/55
    IND 100/67/50/50/50/50/100/75/50
    MAC 46/38/46/38/42/58/43/43/50
    MWC 56/56/56/56/56/56/38/75/60
    P10 30*/70/50/60/80/50/50/70/80
    SEC 83/83/67/83/75/50/58/58/75
    SB 22*/44/50/38/50/25/22/13/38
    WAC 44*/67/67/44/44/56/50/50/40

    So the 30/10 this year would be a low for a BCS conference, the Sun Belt has had just one team qualify in the past.

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