Rating the 2017 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

Let's start off our review with the Atlantic Coast Conference. An explanation of the rating system can be found here. FCS teams are indicated by italics. "N-" prefixes indicate neutral site games.

1. Florida State (2 legit, 1 FCS): N-Alabama, Louisiana-Monroe, Delaware State, @Florida. The ACC will get off to a crackin' start on Labor Day weekend, and it's not a coincidence the two teams that will play in the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium are at the top of this list. (Which reminds me: is there a funny name out there for the new Dome? In Dallas there's Jerry Jones's Intergalactic Space Palace, so what would the Atlanta equivalent be? Arthur Blank's Pan-Universal Fun Dome? I'm open to suggestions.) Of course, don't let the realization that it's entirely possibly FSU and Bama will meet again, probable even, in the college football playoff. Especially not that they could meet in the very same stadium again.
2. Georgia Tech (1.75, 1): N-Tennessee, Jacksonville State, @Central Florida, Georgia. Us Tech-types have been aching for years to get into the party that takes place every Labor Day weekend a mile from campus, so the the chance to make it four straight against the SEC East is just gravy. Meanwhile, I'm as against it as anyone else, but I will at least note that when you see major conference teams play games at Group of Five stadiums it's usually as part of a multi-game deal or the major conference team is saving money. Hopefully I remember this when the return game comes around in 2020.
3. Pittsburgh (1, 1): Youngstown State, @Pennsylvania State, Oklahoma State, Rice. This is an OOC schedule that checks all the boxes. 1) Does it involve a non-mandatory rivalry? Check. 2) Does it feature a geographically distant major-conference foe? Check.
4. Clemson (1, 1): Kent State, Auburn, Citadel, @South Carolina. Clemson's fate this season has vastly more to do with their in-conference games with Florida State and Louisville, but nonetheless the return game of this Tigers-Tigers series is rife with implication, provided Auburn is any good. Also, it gives us something to look forward to in the desert that usually is Week 2.
5. Boston College (1, 0): @Northern Illinois, Notre Dame, Central Michigan, @Connecticut. Okay, one road game against a G5 opponent I can understand, but how do you manage to get two on the schedule at once? Nonetheless, the Golden Eagles get credit for ducking a FCS opponent this year, depending on how you feel about UConn. (Which for most, I suspect, is nothing.)
6. Syracuse (1, 1): Central Connecticut State, Middle Tennessee State, Central Michigan, @Louisiana State. So this year I switched the spreadsheet to a system that allowed the "legit" points to be grabbed from another sheet and automatically calculated. There were some occasional mistakes, but this is a good example of one I didn't catch until I was putting the rankings together. "Yeah, let's see, FCS, MTSU, Central Mich... oh right, LSU, yeah that should probably rate higher than 13th."
7. North Carolina State (1, 1): N-South Carolina, Marshall, Furman, @Notre Dame. It's hard to know what to do with Notre Dame on an ACC team's schedule these days, since it's not really an organic matchup. So that's how you get a game at LSU counting better than a game at Notre Dame and a neutral site game against South Carolina.
8. Miami (1, 1): Bethune-Cookman, @Arkansas State, Toledo, Notre Dame. Miami continues its tour of random G5 campuses, this team flying to... whereever you fly to get to Jonesboro, Arkansas. Memphis, I guess? Anyway, I decided to stay consistent with my earlier assessment of the Notre Dame thing.
9. North Carolina (1, 1): California, @Old Dominion, Notre Dame, Western Carolina. Okay, seriously, what is up ACC teams? Did everyone get together at Media Days a few years ago and decide "yes, let's schedule all of our road games against non-major opponents in the same season"? That's four out of nine so far!
10. Wake Forest (1, 1): Presbyterian, Utah State, @Appalachian State, @Notre Dame. 5 out of 10!
11. Duke (0.5, 1): North Carolina Central, Northwestern, Baylor, @Army. 6 out of 11!
12. Virginia (0.5, 1): William & Mary, Indiana, Connecticut, @Boise State. 7 out of 12!
13. Virginia Tech (0.5, 1): N-West Virginia, Delaware, @East Carolina, Old Dominion. 8 out of 13!
14. Louisville (0, 1): N-Purdue, Kent State, Murray State, @Kentucky. Nine out of... oh, right, Kentucky's in the SEC.

Click below to see my closing thoughts.

Rating the 2016 Non-Conference Slate

So yeah, this is kind of late! My apologies, but unlike last year, I've actually been employed during the timeframe that I usually do this.

To make up for it, I'm just going to do this all in one go. So strap in and hold on, because we're about to talk about some schedules and make some wild guesses about 60 football teams.

First, the usual explanation. Every summer, my brother and I rate the attractiveness of each team in the Power 5 conferences plus a few other teams. Our ratings, broadly speaking, are:

• 0: unless you're a fan of a team that is a zero, you probably count this team as an automatic win. These are your Purdues and Kansases of the world.
• 0.25: hardcore college football types might get up for this, or they're a respectable team on a downswing. Examples of this type are Duke and Northwestern.
• 0.5: these are usually respectable teams we don't find very exciting to watch, or teams that aren't really very good but have some redeeming quality. Examples of this type are Louisville, Kansas State, and California.
• 0.75: these are the Rodney Dangerfield of teams, that is, teams that are actually good but don't really get a lot of respect, that is, until they beat your team. Examples of teams in this category are Wisconsin and Mississippi.
• 1: these are teams that have either fought their way to respectability or will pretty much always get your hackles up because they're the Notre Dames and Alabamas of the world.

The only non-Power 5 teams to receive a rating other than 0 were Notre Dame (1), Boise State (0.75), Brigham Young (0.5), and Houston (0.25).

Additionally, when average up the numbers of the whole schedule, several teams will usually have the same value. I use the following as tiebreakers, though all are subject to exceptions:

• First and foremost, if two teams have the same schedule rating but one plays no FCS teams and other plays one, then the team with no FCS teams will get ranked higher.
• I tend to discount yearly rivalries, but give boosts to rivalries that have been on hold or are otherwise played infrequently, like Penn State-Pitt or Florida-Miami.
• Power 5 teams rated a zero still count for more than a Group of 5 team rated a zero.
• Sometimes I'll give the nod to a team that plays two 0.25 rated teams over a team that plays one 0.5 team.
• Generally awful teams that play a bunch of really good teams may get discounted because, well, they didn't scheduled because it'd be a fun matchup, they got scheduled because they needed a homecoming game. This could be called the "Kansas rule", probably.

Now some dorky numbers about the distribution.

• First, we rated 72 teams, since we do rate some non-Power 5 teams.
• The average rating was 0.4965.
• We gave 21 teams a 1, 6 teams a 0.75, 15 teams a 0.5, 11 teams a 0.25, and 19 teams a 0. 

Note that since the ratings themselves are the completely subjective opinions of two Georgia Tech fans that grew up in the South, there are some biases. To wit, here are the average ratings for each Power 5 conference:

1. Southeastern: 0.625
2. Pacific-12: 0.563
3. Big 12: 0.56
4. Atlantic Coast: 0.464
5. Big Ten: 0.446

This year, the Pac-12 moved past the Big 12, but just barely! We're a little down on the SEC and Big 12 this year compared to years past as well.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's get down to business. Teams in italics are FCS schools.

ACC

I wrestled with who to put at the top of the ACC's ratings. I'll explain my logic below.

1. Florida State (1.75 legit, 1 FCS): N-Mississippi, Charleston Southern, @South Florida, Florida. I went with FSU as #1 mostly on the strength of Ole Miss versus Tennessee. Both teams have a team they're required to play (Florida in this case), so ultimately I went with this. It's also the more interesting matchup and has possible national title implications.
2. Virginia Tech (1.75, 1): Liberty, N-Tennessee, East Carolina, @Notre Dame. As you can imagine, it was close. Tennessee is supposed to be good this year, and the neutral field in this case is the infield of Bristol Motor Speedway. Nonetheless, Ole Miss seems more likely to be good, the implications are less, and VPI is playing Notre Dame because the ACC said they had to this year.
3. Clemson (1.25, 1): @Auburn, Troy, South Carolina State, South Carolina. Clemson's schedule isn't too shabby either, mostly suffering from the drop-off of their chief rival more than anything else.
4. Duke (1.25, 1): North Carolina Central, @Northwestern, @Notre Dame, Army. I'm debating whether Notre Dame really counts as "OOC" for the purposes of this review, given their agreement with the ACC, but for now they can stick around here and count toward the ratings.
5. Pittsburgh (1, 1): Villanova, Pennsylvania State, @Oklahoma State, Marshall. Pitt will get their grudge match with the Nittany Lions out of the way early, but the trip to Stillwater could wind up telling us more about whether the Panthers are back in any appreciable way.
6. Virginia (1, 1): Richmond, @Oregon, @Connecticut, Central Michigan. They finally fired Mike London, right? Well, there goes that dependable joke. At any rate, the Hoos will likely make Oregon look like Oregon again.
7. Miami (1, 1): Florida A&M, Florida Atlantic, @Appalachian State, @Notre Dame. Da U taking a road trip to Boone, NC is... one of the odder road trips I can ever remember appearing in this space. This must be for a 3-for-1 or something.
8. North Carolina State (1, 1): William & Mary, @East Carolina, Old Dominion, Notre Dame. Just milkin' Notre Dame at this point.
9. Syracuse (1, 1): Colgate, South Florida, @Connecticut, Notre Dame. Is Syracuse trying to prove that it can "still just be friends" with its former Big East conference-mates? Or did they schedule USF thinking it'd be an easy win (when, well, good luck with that, maybe).
10. Georgia Tech (1, 1): Mercer, Vanderbilt, Georgia Southern, @Georgia. It's funny that the team with two SEC schools appears this low, but, well, one of them is Vanderbilt and the other is a yearly rivalry game, so, yeah. 
11. North Carolina (1, 2): N-Georgia, @Illinois, James Madison, Citadel. Neutral site games against one of the better teams in the SEC is good. On the road to Illinois, well, nothing to write home about, but they probably didn't know that 6 years ago. Two FCS teams? Oof. 
12. Louisville (0.25, 0): Charlotte, @Marshall, @Houston, Kentucky. Yes, that's right, the 0.25 comes from Houston. That could be a really good game, actually, but let's hold off on that until we get there.
13. Wake Forest (0, 1): Tulane, Delaware, @Indiana, Army. An appropriately milquetoast schedule.
14. Boston College (0, 1): Massachusetts, Wagner, Buffalo, Connecticut. That sure is a collection of Northeastern cupcake schools, all right.

Big Ten

Apparently most of the Big Ten took the move to three conference games as an excuse to just not schedule anyone interesting at all. At least most of them didn't or don't schedule FCS teams.

1. Michigan State (1.25, 1): Furman, @Notre Dame, Brigham Young. Sparty gets us off to a solid start, and while Michigan State-Notre Dame is usually fun, it doesn't quite have the panache that our runner-up does.
2. Wisconsin (1, 0): N-Louisiana State, Akron, Georgia State. Yep, that's right, if there were a completely subjective endeavor then this would probably be the #1 on the strength of this LSU game, which is actually being played in Green Bay for some reason.
3. Ohio State (1, 0): Bowling Green State, Tulsa, @Oklahoma. Honestly, I kinda want to get to previewing the Sooners? Anyway, I like the move of playing two Oklahoma schools here. Seriously, how does that happen? Ohio State being in, well, Ohio has the entire MAC smorgasbord to choose from when selecting teams to play, yet winds up with one of the two other schools in Oklahoma that isn't Oklahoma. Coincidence? Well, yeah, probably.
4. Nebraska (1, 0): Fresno State, Wyoming, Oregon. Are the Huskers back? I honestly have no idea, but the numbers would say that it's unlikely they'll lose as painfully and as often last year. Note: I didn't say they will win more than last year, necessarily.
5. Pennsylvania State (0.5, 0): Kent State, @Pittsburgh, Temple. We know all about the Penn State-Pitt thing, but imagine if Penn State loses to Temple again.
6. Rutgers (0.5, 1): @Washington, Howard, New Mexico. Well, Rutgers will probably luck into winnings two of these games.
7. Illinois (0.5, 1):  Murray State, North Carolina, Western Michigan. Remember that time last year when Illinois fired their coach mere weeks before the season started? Well, if the Broncos can row that boat right into Urbana-Champaign we may get a much more traditional in-season firing.
8. Michigan (0, 0): Hawaii, Central Florida, Colorado. I'll comment on the Hawaii thing in the preview for this weekend, but in the meantime, boy howdy this is basically a preseason for the Wolverines.
9. Indiana (0, 0): @Florida International, Ball State, Wake Forest. At FIU! That's, uh, uncharted territory for a Big Ten program, I'm pretty sure.
10. Northwestern (0, 1): Western Michigan, Illinois State, Duke. Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type back when I started this site, or really, up until about 30 seconds ago: You know, that Northwestern-Duke game could be kind of interesting.
11. Minnesota (0, 1): Oregon State, Indiana State, Colorado State. With the Vikings moving into their new home, the Gophers finally have their home field to themselves again. However, since Big Ten teams play all their OOC games in September, expect a lot of comments about humidity and mosquitoes.
12. Purdue (0, 1): Eastern Kentucky, Cincinnati, Nevada. The most exciting thing about this schedule is that Purdue might lose all of these games.
13. Iowa (0, 1): Miami, Iowa State, North Dakota State. I may have done this before, but sure as heck not very often: yes, Iowa is rated higher than Maryland because they play Iowa State and North Dakota State over FIU and UCF. It doesn't help that NDSU is a powerhouse and UCF was completely and utterly awful in every regard last season.
14. Maryland (0, 1): Howard, @Florida International, @Central Florida. Terps tryin' to work that Florida pipeline, I guess? Hey, whatever works.

Big 12

1. Texas (1.5, 0): Notre Dame, Texas-El Paso, @California. Because of how we do the ratings (see above), Texas comes out ahead here on the strength of Cal over Houston. Nonetheless, despite actually being less interesting this is still pretty solid in its own right, because if nothing else it's not like the Big 12 and Pac-12 play each other very often. Well, other than two teams below.
2. Oklahoma (1.25, 0): N-Houston, Louisiana-Monroe, Ohio State. I know I've been beaten to this punch literally hundreds of times over the past six months, but it bears repeating: if the Sooners go 3-0 against this schedule, then they will be in the playoff barring some other disaster, like losing to Texas again.
3. Kansas State (1, 1):  @Stanford, Florida Atlantic, Missouri State. The "Bill Synder is old/a wizard" jokes don't seem as funny anymore, because it especially seems that he, and by extension, the program is running a bit low on steam. I have to think this will be his last year.
4. West Virginia (0.5, 1): Missouri, Youngstown State, N-Brigham Young. This is a pretty solid schedule to set up whatever inexplicable thing West [redacted] Virginia is going to do this year. If you're a 'Neer, just strap in, pop a Red Bull Holgo-style, and enjoy.
5. Texas Tech (0.5, 1): Stephen F. Austin, @Arizona State, Louisiana Tech. Wait, make that three Big 12-Pac-12 games. Uh... anyway, so speaking of jokes getting old, I note that no one is talking about Cliff Kingsbury's dashing good looks anymore. Vacillating between 4 and 8 wins has that effect.
6. Oklahoma State (0.5, 1): Southeastern Louisiana, Central Michigan, Pittsburgh. Mike Gundy has to be one of the longest tenured coaches in FBS, right? Seriously, that "I'm a MAN! I'm FORTY!" press conference flip-out was nine years ago. Of course, he's an alum, and if he was going to leave, he'd have done it by now. But are they happy with him in Stillwater? Is T. Boone's money happy with him? Of course, with the shine off oil prices right now, maybe that stick isn't as big as it used to be. Anyway! We'll find out sometime after they play those three teams.
7. Iowa State (0.5, 1): Northern Iowa, @Iowa, San Jose State. The championship of Iowa could well be decided when Northern Iowa plays North Dakota State on October 29th. Wouldn't that be something?
8. Texas Christian (0.25, 1): South Dakota State, Arkansas, @Southern Methodist. One of these years I'm going to crunch the numbers and start awarding Southwestern Conference championships because, seriously Big 12 just invite SMU, Houston, and Rice and get it over with.
9. Kansas (0, 1): Rhode Island, Ohio, @Memphis. The Jayhawks will probably be doing well to get two wins out of this.
10. Baylor (0, 1): Northwestern State, Southern Methodist, @Rice.

Pacific 12

1. Southern California (2, 0): N-Alabama, Utah State, Notre Dame. We're off to a pretty good start here for the Pac-12. Of course, the Trojans usually appear near the top of my rankings thanks to their annual game with Notre Dame, so all they need to do is add another worthwhile team. Thankfully, they usually do.
2. Stanford (1.5, 0): Kansas State, @Notre Dame, Rice. Of course, the Cardinal also play Notre Dame all the time, but Kansas State and Rice are... not quite Alabama.
3. California-Los Angeles (1.25, 0): @Texas A&M, Nevada-Las Vegas, @Brigham Young. There's a chance for UCLA to make a statement early, but considering how mixed the predictions are for TAMU this year, that statement may get somewhat less impactful as the season goes on.
4. California (1, 0): N-Hawaii, @San Diego State, Texas. Let's pretend one of these games didn't get played already, and wonder how Cal will deal with SDSU's possibly really good defense. Against Texas, one wonders if even Cal's defense can make Texas's offense look something other than "dysfunctional".
5. Colorado (1, 1): N-Coloardo State, Idaho State, @Michigan. It seemed like the Buffs made some baby steps toward mediocrity last year, but we'll find out real quick how close they are in their annual neutral site tilt with the Rams. At any rate, it'll tell us more than the trip to Ann Arbor—the Buffs are still a ways from being able to mount a challenge there.
6. Oregon (1, 1): California-Davis, Virginia, @Nebraska. I wonder how many more years we'll be wondering if the Ducks are "back" yet. They're definitely not favorites this year, heck, I'm not sure if a lot of people even have them second in the Pac-12 North.
7. Oregon State (0.75, 1): @Minnesota, Idaho State, Boise State. While Mile Reilly really doesn't seem like the guy for Nebraska so far, I have to think that there might be a few wistful stares down at the corn fields of Nebraska on the way to Minneapolis.
8. Washington State (0.5, 1): Eastern Washington, @Boise State, Idaho. Fun facts about this particular collection of teams! For starters, it's a relatively compact group, especially considering the area in which all these teams are located. Stadium-to-stadium it's 56, 221, and 9 miles, respectively, which makes Boise about 30 miles closer to Pullman than Seattle. And of course, you know about Boise's famous blue turf, but don't forget about Eastern Washington's (in)famous red turf. Idaho, meanwhile, plays in the KIBBIE DOME, which five years ago I apparently called the "crucible of potato pain" and have otherwise generally admired over the years. Let's wryly note that it'd be kind of funny if Wazzou loses to a FCS team again this year while otherwise having an okay season and take a moment to reflect on Idaho, a team that just couldn't make it work in DI-A/FBS. Effectively homeless after the dissolution of the WAC for football, they wound up in the Sun Belt, which has decided to boot its affiliate members beyond the 2017 season. Without any other options, the Vandals will drop back to FCS and play football in the Big Sky conference. While I imagine they'll still show up in the previews, alas, the hope of getting a big name team in the KIBBIE DOME is effectively over.
9. Arizona State (0.25, 1): Northern Arizona, Texas Tech, @Texas-San Antonio. Um, gee, yeah, back to Pac-12 teams. Uh, Arizona State is going to UTSA for some reason? But hey, they play in the Alamodome, so it'll at least seem big time, from the outside.
10. Arizona (0.25, 1): N-Brigham Young, Grambling State, Hawaii. Let us appreciate Hawaii for a second: they played Cal in Australia already, and will travel to Michigan and Arizona. I guess in this day and age of 12 games schedules and conference championship games the extra home game you get by playing in Honolulu isn't as appealing anymore?
11. Utah (0.25, 1): Southern Utah, Brigham Young, @San Jose State. The way to San Jose: catch a direct flight from Salt Lake City to San Jose, head south on 85, take the Alma Ave exit and follow the signs for Spartan Stadium. That wasn't so hard, was it?
12. Washington (0, 1): Rutgers, Idaho, Portland State. Well, UDub is a trendy pick as a spoiler in the Pac-12 North, and this OOC schedule certainly won't do anything to hinder them.

Southeastern

1. Georgia (1.25, 1): North Carolina, Nichols State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Georgia Tech. This is about as exciting as it's going to get here in SEC territory, especially after we clear the top three. So strap in, folks.
2. Auburn (1, 1): Clemson, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe, Alabama A&M. While Alabama's slate is probably more exciting in several ways, I'm still deferring to the fact that, well, between Clemson and Alabama Auburn may well have the hardest schedule in the country this year, period.
3. Alabama (1, 1): N-Southern California, Western Kentucky, Kent State, Tennessee-Chattanooga. I don't think I really need to expound on the USC game, so I'll just say that, man, I would give anything for that Western Kentucky game to be exciting for, like, a quarter or two. Just make those pulses in Tuscaloosa quicken a little, ya know? Obviously the Hilltoppers stand no actual chance, but hey, stranger things have happened, strictly speaking.
4. Mississippi (1,1): N-Florida State, Wofford, Memphis, Georgia Southern. Okay, so the odds of Memphis beating Ole Miss two years in a row low, but still, it makes you think. And of course Georgia Southern will bring that option goodness in Oxford. And way back up at the top of the ACC section I noted that there first game could have some possible national title implications, and it still definitely could! Obviously, neither FSU nor Ole Miss are favorites in their conferences, but they've got a non-zero chance of playing each other again.
5. Arkansas (1, 1): Louisiana Tech, @Texas Christian, Texas State, Alcorn State. I guess I'm rating TCU over UCLA, because that's pretty much the only reason this in the order this is in.
6. Texas A&M (1, 1): California-Los Angeles, Prairie View A&M, New Mexico State, Texas-San Antonio. The Aggies figure to get through this non-conference slate 3-1 or 4-0, which means things will really get interesting once they get into the meat of the SEC play, specifically with regard to whether they'll have the same coach at the end of the season as the beginning.
7. South Carolina (1, 1): East Carolina, Massachusetts, Western Carolina, @Clemson. So... obviously the thing to do after Steve Spurrier resigns during the middle of the season en route to the worst record fo the Gamecocks in a long while is to hire... a man who also used to be a Florida head coach, except that unlike Spurrier he wasn't successful at a school at pretty much everyone agrees is more primed for success in the first place. So, yeah, how long is Muschamp's shelf life in Columbia? I give him two seasons, tops.
8. Florida (1, 1): Massachusetts, North Texas, Presbyterian, @Florida State. Speaking of the Gators, they're all the way down here because, well, if they didn't play FSU every year then this wouldn't even be a 1.
9. Louisiana State (0.75, 1): N-Wisconsin, Jacksonville State, Southern Mississippi, South Alabama. I always wrestle with things like "playing Wisconsin in Green Bay" being a neutral site game or not. I generally feel the textbook definition is based on ticket sales: if the split is 50/50, then it's neutral. However, that data's not always easy to come by, so it's easier just to go based off the site instead.
10. Tennessee (0.75, 1): Appalachian State, N-Virginia Tech, Ohio, Tennessee Tech. Between Tennessee, Appalachian State, and VPI we need some sort of Appalachian Championship.
11. Vanderbilt (0.75, 1): Middle Tennessee State, @Georgia Tech, @Western Kentucky, Tennessee State. Full disclosure: Georgia Tech is rated as a 0.75 in our system because, well, we're biased.
12. Missouri (0.5, 1): @West Virginia, Eastern Michigan, Delaware State, Middle Tennessee State. So I got a very nice e-mail yesterday wondering where the annual OOC previews were. Suffice it to say, I was shocked that anyone outside of my immediate family or Facebook feed actually reads any of this stuff, much less looks forward to any of it, so I said that this would probably be the longest previews yet. Since the e-mail was from missouri.edu, I'm assuming that the person in question is a Mizzou fan, so hello there! Thanks for reading!
13. Kentucky (0.5, 1): Southern Mississippi, New Mexico State, Austin Peay, @Louisville. I think there's a pretty good chance Kentucky goes 2-2 against this schedule.
14. Mississippi State (0.25, 1): South Alabama, Massachusetts, @Brigham Young, Samford. I feel like we underrated BYU a bit? But hey, this doesn't feel as bad of a schedule as a looks, and I'll always applaud a SEC school for actually traveling outside of the region.

Okay, so let's sum this up with the usual rituals.

First, there's the List of Shame, that is, teams that play more than one FCS school. I'm happy to report this year there's just one: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which saw fit to play both James Madison and The Citadel.

Next, a completely subjective ranking of the teams I feel that have the most exciting and/or interesting non-conference schedules. Since I talked about them at length above, I'll just list them here:

1. Southern California (2, 0): N-Alabama, Utah State, Notre Dame. Yes, they play Notre Dame every year, but still, it's the only 2 and instead of a FCS team they play Utah State, who are not exactly mincemeat.
2. Florida State (1.75, 1): N-Mississippi, Charleston Southern, @South Florida, Florida.The yearly rivalry here is offset by South Florida, which may be decent again this year! And it's on the road! (Well, we can pretend now that there probably won't be mostly FSU fans there.)
3. Oklahoma (1.25, 0): N-Houston, Louisiana-Monroe, Ohio State. I am seriously geeking out about the Oklahoma-Houston game that I probably won't even get to watch.
4. Texas (1.5, 0): Notre Dame, Texas-El Paso, @California. Again, I said completely subjective. Mostly here because we'll learn about these Longhorns from this schedule.
5. California-Los Angeles (1.25, 0): @Texas A&M, Nevada-Las Vegas, @Brigham Young. SAme applies here, especially with two long trips.

And finally, the conference averages (which, I should note, is an average of an average, to account for 4 versus 3 non-conference games):

1. Pac-12 (0.27)
2. ACC (0.22)
3. SEC (0.21)
4. Big 12 (0.2)
5. Big Ten (0.12)

Seriously, B1G, get with the program.

And that's a wrap! (Apologies for all the grammar mistakes.)

Let's throw it over to the TV listings!

Rating the 2015 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

As always, the first to go with the Atlantic Coast Conference. Let's do this. (Note: FCS teams are marked in italics.)

1. Virginia (2.25 legit, 1 FCS): @California-Los Angeles, Notre Dame, William & Mary, Boise State. By far the strongest non-conference schedule in college football this year. Though it's debatable whether Notre Dame is "non-conference" for ACC teams, but that's something we'll think about for next year. For now, every FBS non-conference team the Cavs play is rated. Ordinarily, we'd say this doesn't bode well for Mike London's job, but we've been saying that for what feels like two or three years at this point, so it's not entirely clear now what would actually get him fired.
2. Georgia Tech (2, 1): Alcorn State, Tulane, @Notre Dame, Georgia. This also rates as a tough schedule, but even then it feels like a bit of a cop-out because of Notre Dame's arrangement with the ACC and because Georgia is a yearly rivalry game. That said, this is still one of the toughest GT schedules (overall) that I can recall since I started following them in 2003, so I'd say it deserves some recognition.
3. Clemson (1.75, 1): Wofford, Appalachian State, Notre Dame, @South Carolina. Of course, the only reason we're not tied with Clemson is because Georgia is a 1 and South Carolina is a 0.75. If it were tied, I probably would've broken the tie by saying Appalachian State is better than Tulane.
4. Pittsburgh (1.25, 1): Youngstown State, @Akron, @Iowa, Notre Dame. This year it felt like there were a lot of road legs of 2-for-1's or 3-for-1's with lesser FBS teams, which hopefully I'll remember not to harp on too often. I'll save my other joke on this schedule for the Iowa blurb.
5. Louisville (1, 1): N-Auburn, Houston, Samford, @Kentucky. First off, good on you folks in the Commonwealth of Kentucky for moving your premier rivalry game to Thanksgiving. As for the schedule, that Louisville-Auburn game could recalibrate a lot of pre-season speculation very, very quickly.
6. Virginia Tech (1, 1): Ohio State, Furman, @Purdue, @East Carolina. VPI-Ohio State was, in retrospect, the most baffling result of 2014. I... would not expect that again.
7. Miami (1, 1): Bethune-Cookman, @Florida Atlantic, Nebraska, @Cincinnati. Miami-Nebraska: a match up of two teams that badly wish it were the 80's or 90's again.
8. Syracuse (1, 1): Rhode Island, Central Michigan, Louisiana State, @South Florida. I suggest Syracuse fans take what they can get and treat the game in Tampa as a bowl game, because that's about as good as it's probably going to get for them this year.
9. Florida State (1, 1): Texas State, South Florida, Tennessee-Chattanooga, @Florida. This is usually the point in the rundown when I start running out of things to say, and this schedule is no exception. It is, however, good for a rebuilding reloading Seminole squad.
10. Wake Forest (1, 1): Elon, @Army, Indiana, @Notre Dame. Deacons versus Priests: the ultimate showdown! (... probably not)
11. Boston College (1, 2): Maine, Howard, Northern Illinois, Notre Dame. Two FCS teams, good job, Boston College: you now face an uphill road to bowl eligibility!
12. North Carolina (0.75, 2): N-South Carolina, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical, Illinois, Delaware. This is the first year in a while where I can't recall reading a swarm of article proclaiming that this will be, in fact, Carolina's year. Which probably means they're going to go 9-3 or something. Of course, playing two FCS teams and Illinois helps with that.
13. Duke (0.25, 1): @Tulane, North Carolina Central, Northwestern, @Army. Army somehow got both Wake Forest and Duke at home this year, good on them! That said, I know Duke is... Duke but still, guys, you're a Power 5 team, you can't have two road games both against non-Power 5 teams.
14. North Carolina State (0, 1): Troy, Eastern Kentucky, @Old Dominion, @South Alabama. Yep, ODU is full FBS this year (along with Georgia Southern and Appalachian State, which I should've mentioned earlier). See what I said re: two road games in the above Duke blurb.

Up next: the Big Ten.

Rating the 2014 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First and sporting some pretty beefy schedules, at least the top end, is the ACC.

1. Florida State (3 legit, 1 FCS): N-Oklahoma State, Citadel, Notre Dame, Florida. This is a pretty strong contender for one of the best schedules in the country. Yes, the meet with the Gators is a rivalry game, but nonetheless there's two class opponents in Oklahoma State and Notre Dame.
2. Clemson (2, 1): @Georgia, South Carolina State, Georgia State, South Carolina. Clemson visits Athens for the second part of their series. The 38-35 win last year set the tone for the Tigers' season, riding a 6 game winning streak until getting dismantled by FSU.
3. Miami (1.25, 1): Florida Agricultural and Mechanical, Arkansas State, @Nebraska, Cincinnati. Miami-Nebraska is the best kind of non-conference game, the intersectional meeting between two teams who don't play each other often. Their last meeting the 2002 Rose Bowl, which the 'Canes won easily. As national powers in the 80's and 90's, they met in four different Orange Bowls, with Miami winning three. The last regular season meeting was in 1976. As for the rest of the schedule, it's pretty standard, though there is that throw-in with former Big East foe Cincinnati.
4. Virginia Tech (1, 1): William & Mary, @Ohio State, East Carolina, Western Michigan. VPI finds itself playing a potential national title contender again, but I'll give them kudos for scheduling those kinds of games at least.
5. North Carolina (1, 1): Liberty, San Diego State, @East Carolina, @Notre Dame. I saved it for this one, but East Carolina is a bit of a trendy pick to be a really good non-power conference team this season, and definitely the sort of team that could make this year's UNC team like every other year's UNC team: overrated. There's also a game at South Bend for good measure.
6. Boston College (1, 1): @Massachusetts, Southern California, Maine, Colorado State. BC will play UMass in a huge NFL stadium and then play Southern Cal in their much cozier home. (UMass, for their part, will be re-opening their on-campus stadium a few weeks later.)
7. Virginia (1, 1): California-Los Angeles, Richmond, @Brigham Young, Kent State. Somehow I doubt Virginia will have the same luck against BYU this year as they did last year. Then again, they may need luck just to get past Richmond and Kent State.
8. Syracuse (1, 1): Villanova, @Central Michigan, Maryland, N-Notre Dame. The 'Cuse already managed to get former ACC member Maryland on the schedule, which is somewhat impressive. The neutral site for the Notre Dame game is MetLife Stadium. I'm going to guess there'll be a lot of blue and gold in the stands that day.
9. Louisville (1, 1): Murray State, @Florida International, @Notre Dame, Kentucky. I know that Notre Dame has a "scheduling agreement" with the ACC now, but geez. This schedule also goes near the bottom for a "wtf?" road game at FIU and the fact that I tend to discount yearly rivalry games a bit.
10. Georgia Tech (1, 1.5): Wofford, @Tulane, Georgia Southern, @Georgia. Our road game at Tulane, meanwhile, is to open up the return of football at Tulane for the first time since 1975. Other than that, there's not much else to recommend this schedule. The half-FCS point is for Georgia Southern, which is a transitional team this year.
11. Pittsburgh (0.5, 1): Delaware, @Florida International, Iowa, Akron. FIU managed to score eight home games this year, which is really good for a team like them. That's probably one way to line up your 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 deals, but if I were a mid-major AD I'd probably shoot for spreading the wealth a little bit, you know?
12. Duke (0, 1): Elon, @Troy, Kansas, Tulane. Speaking of called in return games, Duke will venture to Troy. We'll quickly get an idea if the Blue Devils are working their magic again this year, it seems.
13. Wake Forest (0, 1): @Louisiana-Monroe, Gardner-Webb, @Utah State, Army. Okay, what the heck? Is the ACC going on on a barnstorming tour this year?
14. North Carolina State (0, 2): Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, @South Florida, Presbyterian. This might be one of the worst schedules in the country, with two transitional teams, an additional full FCS team for good measure, oh yeah, and then a road game.

So pretty good at the top, but pretty atrocious at the bottom. What do the other conferences have in store for us? Tune in next time for the Big Ten.

Rating the 2013 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First up, the Atlantic Coast Conference. See last year's post for all the gory details.

1. Clemson (2 legit, 2 FCS): Georgia, South Carolina State, Citadel, @South Carolina. Clemson and UGA meeting up again is always a good thing. "Wait", you say, "aren't those two schools your two biggest rivals?" Well, yes. Nonetheless, the Clemson-GT rivalry is not in-state and is not nearly as acrimonious as the one with the so-call "university" in Athens. So unlike when Georgia and Alabama meet, and I can still root for Georgia's opponent without a twinge of guilt. Anyway, though I usually discount yearly rivalry games for these purposes, I simply couldn't rate any other schedules above this one, despite the two FCS schools.
2. Virginia Tech (1, 1): N-Alabama, Western Carolina, @East Carolina, Marshall. I have to say, I like Clemson's chances against Georgia much, much better than VPI's against Alabama. Ugh. But it's good enough for second on this list.
3. Virginia (1, 1): Brigham Young, Oregon, Virginia Military Institute, Ball State. It's always good to see East Coast-West Coast matchups, especially in the ACC. Unfortunately, that doesn't really say anything about the quality of the game that is likely to be played.
4. North Carolina (1, 1): @South Carolina, Middle Tennessee State, East Carolina, Old Dominion. UNC-USC is getting a fair bit of publicity, as it will be the first major game of the season. It'll also be an early test for the Tarheels. The rest of their schedule is what it is, as the kids say.
5. Boston College (1,1): Villanova, @Southern California, Army, @New Mexico State. It's possible that BC may lose to Villanova, but they deserve some credit for the road game to LA.
6. Miami (1, 1): Florida Atlantic, Florida, Savannah State, @South Florida. Ranked this low under the "rival game" rule, even though they don't quite play Florida every year. Might've been the top schedule if they rounded up the all-Florida look with the only school they're missing now: FIU.
7. Florida State (1, 1): Nevada, Bethune-Cookman, Idaho, @Florida. Again, yearly rivalry games don't count as much in these rankings. Too bad that's not the frisky Nevada squad from a few years ago, as well.
8. Pittsburgh (1,1): New Mexico, Old Dominion, @Navy, Notre Dame. See above on "rivalry games".
9. Syracuse (1, 1): N-Pennsylvania State, @Northwestern, Wagner, Tulane. That said, strength of your rivalry opponent does count for something. Perhaps I'm punishing the 'Cuse unfairly for what happened to Penn State, but them's the breaks.
10. Georgia Tech (1, 2): Elon, @Brigham Young, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical, Georgia. All the way down here due to two FCS schools. Also, it's been recently reported that the GT-Alabama series scheduled for later this decade has been indefinitely postponed. It's starting to look pretty bleak for the alma mater, I have to say. But hey, there's room in the schedule now for that GT-Stanford or GT-Cal home-and-home, right?
11. Maryland (0.75, 1): Florida International, Old Dominion, @Connecticut, N-West Virginia. WVU is playing the wrong ACC team here. Can we get the Backyard Brawl back?
12. Wake Forest (0.25, 1): Presbyterian, Louisiana-Monroe, @Army, @Vanderbilt. Not much to even joke about here. I imagine Wake is not thrilled about the up-and-coming Commodores, though, as that used to be a competitive matchup for the Demon Deacons.
13. North Carolina State (0, 1): Louisiana Tech, Richmond, Central Michigan, East Carolina. There's just nothing to say about this schedule in any way, shape, or form. Well, other than the chance they'll lose to Louisiana Tech.
14. Duke (0, 1): North Carolina Central, @Memphis, Troy, Navy. With an OOC schedule like this, Duke will almost certainly make a bowl again, as they'll need just two conference wins.

That's right, I'm still here

Given the catastrophe that is the ACC Coastal, here is a sampling of the possible division scenarios:

1. Duke wins out against GT and Miami. They win the division. Needless to say, it's pretty rare for a team that controls its own destiny after 10 games to be double-digit underdogs in their two remaining games.
2. GT beats Duke, Duke beats Miami. GT wins Coastal.
3. Duke beats GT and loses to Miami. Miami wins Coastal.
4. Duke loses to both GT and Miami, UNC goes 1-1 or 0-2 against UVA and Maryland. Miami wins Coastal by head-to-head win over GT earlier this year.
5. Duke loses to both GT and Miami, UNC goes 2-0 to finish. This is where it gets fun. To save some trouble, it goes straight to ACC tiebreak rule #3, which I'll quote here in all its confusing glory:

Head-to-head competition versus the team within the division with the best overall (divisional or conference) record, and proceeding through the division. Multiple ties within the division will be broken first to last.

In English, this means that that the teams in the tiebreak will have their head-to-head results against teams in the division that are outside the tiebreak group compared in descending order. In this scenario, the winner hinges on the winner of UVA-VT.  If VT wins (assuming they beat BC), Miami goes to Charlotte.

If UVA wins, things get really interesting. There would then be a 3-way tie for 4th at 3-5, which would mean that the tie for 1st could not be broken until that was resolved (also, the tie for 4th can't be broken until the tie for 1st is).  Problem is that the rule says ties have to be broken from the top down, and none of these teams are likely to be ranked at the end of the year...so we'd possibly have to fall through to tiebreaker #8, which is a random drawing.

Update: If Miami self-imposes a postseason ban then we could potentially end up with a 4-way tie at 4-4 for "first" (GT loses to Duke, Duke loses to Miami, UNC goes 1-1, VT goes 2-0) due to a 5-3 Miami being ineligible. 

In this scenario, VT and Duke would come out of the first set due to being 2-1 against the group. VT then takes it due to beating Duke head-to-head, I think. As far as I can tell, this is VT's only possible scenario now that UNC is allowed to create ties.

Update 2: Ken Sugiura has a better version (worked out with help from the ACC league office) HERE

Rating the 2012 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First on the docket is the Atlantic Coast Conference. The format for this, and subsequent posts, is to list each team from 1-12 with the number of legit points in their OOC schedule and then number of FCS (the subdivision formerly known as DI-AA). There are lots of ties of course, which tend to be broken in arbitrary ways. Usually, I tend to favor a quantity of other major conference teams over quality simply because it's harder to predict the ups-and-downs of your opponents (unless you're scheduling Duke) and so playing two major conference teams is usually braver than playing just one. I also tend to slightly discount teams that are each other's yearly rivalry. Generally, though, my main tiebreaker is the number of FCS teams played. Most teams play 1, but some play one or one of the transitional teams (which I count as "half" a FCS team), and a select few even play two. Anyway, let's do this. Also, a "N-" means the game is at a neutral site, and teams in italics are FCS.

1. Clemson (1.75 legit, 1 FCS): N-Auburn, Ball State, Furman, South Carolina. This is what I meant when I said that sometimes this is somewhat arbitrary. The neutral site game with Auburn should be fun once again, though, and is the most appealing out-of-conference ACC matchup.
2. Miami (1.75, 1): @Kansas State, Bethune-Cookman, Notre Dame, South Florida. Yes, there's three major conference teams here (though how much does the Big East really count anymore?) but I couldn't put this over the top. Miami-Notre Dame is one of the few things that probably makes people wish it were the 80's again, though.
3. Florida State (1.5, 2): Murray State, Savannah State, @South Florida, Florida. This is your reminder that South Florida is not, in fact, in what most people would call southern Florida. Anyway, they should've just gone for the sweep and scheduled FAU and FIU.
4. Virginia (1.25, 1): Richmond, Pennsylvania State, @Texas Christian, Louisiana Tech. I originally had Boston College ahead, but it's not UVA's fault what's going on at Penn State and going to TCU is certainly a brave choice.
5. Boston College (1.25, 1): Maine, @Northwestern, @Army, Notre Dame. Whereas BC plays Notre Dame all the time, and while Northwestern isn't awful anymore they're still Northwestern.
6. Georgia Tech (1, 1): Presbyterian, Middle Tennessee State, Brigham Young, Georgia. There's very little exciting about our OOC schedule this year. We play BYU for the first time since my freshman year in 2003. Hopefully we win this time.
7. Virginia Tech (1, 1): Austin Peay, @Pittsburgh, Bowling Green, N-Cincinnati. This had the potential to be more exciting, but Pitt and Cincy are just too wildly inconsistent to get worked up about.
8. Wake Forest (1,1): Liberty, Army, @Notre Dame, Vanderbilt. The Wake Forest-Vandy series continues, which is nice to see, though occasionally a bit confusing since they have the exact same color scheme.
9. Maryland (0.75, 1): William & Mary, @Temple, Connecticut, @West Virginia. Maryland is getting kind of beat down thanks to the introduction of zeroes this year, but it's not like they thought Temple was going to be in the Big East when they scheduled them. Also, how many points will WVU score on Maryland? My guess is somewhere around "a lot".
10. Duke (0.75, 1): Florida International, @Stanford, North Carolina Central, Memphis. I wonder if Duke will have more fans in Palo Alto than when Wake Forest came out here. I've got my doubts.
11. North Carolina State (0.75, 1.5): N-Tennessee, @Connecticut, South Alabama, The Citadel. NC State playing Tennessee in Atlanta. It sort of makes sense, I guess. Maybe. Okay, not really, but it's happening anyway.
12. North Carolina (0.5, 1): Elon, @Louisville, East Carolina, Idaho. There's not a whole lot to get excited about here, that's for sure.

Somewhat begrudgingly, next up is the Big East.

Rating the 2010 Non-Conference Slate, Part 1: ACC

The ACC actually has a lot of make-or-break out-of-conference games this year, a big deal for a conference hoping to live up to their new TV deal. As an ACC fan, let me tell you a lot of folks in this conference (especially from the "southern wing") suffer from what I call "SEC-envy". Unlike many of these folks, I don't think the media is actively biased against the conference. That said, sometimes the conference doesn't really help itself. But with the nation's 2nd toughest OOC schedule as a group (with a "legit average" of 0.3177) the ACC will have its chances to show its mettle. Let's get started.

Oh, I should note that in some cases, schools were tied with the same rating, in which case the tie is broken first by the number of DI-AA teams on the schedule and then completely arbitarily.

1. Florida State (2.5 legit, 1 DI-AA): Samford, @Oklahoma, Brigham Young, Florida. Hope of getting back to the ACC forefront abounds in Tallahassee this year, and this schedule can help with 3 pretty legit teams on the slate. Florida is of course a rivalry game, but Seminole fans have to be hoping Christian Ponder can show Sooner fans what they're missing this year. If FSU can win two of the big three of these they will finish the season ranked, provided their defense doesn't catch fire within the conference again.
2. Miami (1.75, 1): Florida A&M, @Ohio State, @Pittsburgh, South Florida. Okay, this isn't, your, um, older brother's Miami team, but a rematch of a national title game is always fun. 
3. Clemson (1.75, 1): North Texas, Presbyterian, @Auburn, South Carolina. Well, it's not Clemson-Georgia but Tigers vs. Tigers is always fun. 
4. North Carolina (1.5, 1): N-Louisiana State, @Rutgers, East Carolina, William & Mary. Well, the biggest thing here is the season kick-off neutral site against LSU. Most ACC partisans feel LSU is ripe for the pickin' in this game, but then they turn around say that UNC themselves is extremely beatable. So we'll see. I will say that if there's year that LSU seems vulnerable, to me, this is it.
5. Georgia Tech (1.5, 1): South Carolina State, @Kansas, Middle Tennessee State, @Georgia. Well, we get post-Mangino Kansas in Lawrence. Um, outside of that, there's not really much to say about this slate, other than that the MTSU series is a 2-for-1 and I think the trip to Murfeesboro is next year.
6. Boston College (1.25, 1): Weber State, Kent State, Notre Dame, @Syracuse. I have no idea what to say about this schedule. They'll be favored to win all of these except ND, and even then they should have a pretty good chance. Oh, and it just gets worse from here.
7. Duke (1, 1): Elon, Alabama, Army, @Navy. Let's be clear here: two of three are on the schedule because this is Duke, which is also the reason they're on Alabama's joke of a schedule. 
8. Maryland (1, 1): N-Navy, Morgan State, @West Virginia, Florida International. The Navy game is in Baltimore, which should be fun except that I think Navy is probably going to win. I wish Maryland could play Colorado in the "battle of coaches who probably should have been fired a year ago" bowl.
9. Virginia (1, 2): Richmond, @Southern California, Virginia Military, Eastern Michigan. The only ACC team playing two DI-AA teams, they probably need it the most. At least their new coach probably shouldn't lose to Richmond.
10. Virginia Tech (0.75, 1): N-Boise State, James Madison, East Carolina, Central Michigan. I don't know if the VPI-Boise State game is THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME IN ACC HISTORY, but it is a big deal for the conference. Once again, VPI can use their opening game as the kick off to a darkhorse national title run, while this is the most important game on Boise's schedule. So that is one to watch. The rest of this schedule? Not so much.
11. Wake Forest (0.75, 1): Presbyterian, @Stanford, Navy, @Vanderbilt. Let's see... anything clever to say about this? Well, um, both Vandy and Wake have gold and black as their primary colors. Um. Yeah, I got nothin'. Oh, well, yes, Stanford is still only worth 0.5 points, one year does not grant you legitimacy. 
12. North Carolina State (0.5, 1): Western Carolina, @Central Florida, Cincinnati, @East Carolina. Who is the AD at NCSU? How did you end up scheduling two mid-majors away in the same year? There are a lot of schedules worse than this one. But there are also a lot of better ones. But then again, NCSU has been pretty solidly "mediocre-to-bad" since 2003, so if the same AD has been there the entire time (I'm too lazy to look) they should have been fired a long time ago anyway.

Join us next time, for the Big East!

My ACC Championship Game Adventure

Well, someone has to liveblog the ACC title game, right? While all the cool kids are off with their "undefeated teams" and "national title implications" I'll be at the throbbing, vibrant heart of ACC football: Tampa, Florida.

Okay, perhaps not so much. But still, I'll be there and updating - not this blog directly, but on those newfangled Twitter and Facebook things. If you already read this on FB, well, you're good to go. If not, or you really like Twitter, you can follow me at asimsports.

Edit: Twitter updates will now also appear on the sidebar to the right.

Yeah, the World Really Needs Another SEC-Big Ten Matchup

So I read Georgia Tech sports message boards. This is oftentimes a mistake, but sometimes has a payoff.

So I was just reading the latest about how ACC leadership is screwing the pooch and thinking it's the usual amount of hyperbole and, as one poster once said, "hand waving freak-outery". The problem is that this time it's completely justified:

The Gator Bowl is returning to what its chairman considers "Jacksonville's roots," with the announcement Wednesday that the game will match a Southeastern Conference team against the Big Ten beginning with the 2010 season at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium.

So if you're the ACC, you just lost your only traditional New Year's Day bowl outside of the BCS. What do you do to make up for this? You, uh, decide to replicate the Gator in the Champs Sports, just for old time's sake:

The Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando has been elevated to the number three spot in the ACC's contracted bowl selection order for 2010 through 2013, conference officials announced Wednesday.

That article also notes that the Gator wanted the ACC to drop its team selection rules, which I generally support. But the ACC needed to replace the Gator on the New Year's day schedule, and needed to schedule someone other than the Big East. Don't worry though, the ACC was right there to sweep the SEC's crumbs in the lovely destination known as Shreveport: Wright told the club it looked like the 2010 matchup in the AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl would match teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Mountain West Conference.
Well, I guess you could argue that the Mountain West is somewhat more prestigious than the Big East at this point.

Anyway, back to my original point. Provided the SEC keeps the rest of its current bowls, they'll have the following lineup next year (not necessarily in order, as the slots are still being worked out):

1. Capital One (vs. Big Ten)
2. Cotton (vs. Big 12)
3. Outback (vs. Big Ten)
4. Gator (vs. Big Ten)
5. Chick-fil-a (vs. ACC)
6. Music City (vs. ACC)
7. Liberty (vs. C-USA)
8. Papajohns.com (vs. Big East)

Yes, this world really needs three SEC-Big Ten matchups on the same day. At least get a Pac-10 team in there or something just to mix it up a little.

By the way, here's my projected pecking order for the ACC:

1. Chick-fil-a (vs. SEC)
2. Champs Sports (vs. Big East/Notre Dame)
3. Music City (vs. SEC)
4. Sun (vs. Pac-10)
5. Car Care (vs. Big East)
6. Independence (vs. Mountain West)
   
7. Eagle Bank (vs. at-large)
8. GMAC (vs. MAC)

At any rate, this is huge blow to the conference's prestige and likely to be a huge financial blow in terms of TV contracts are negotiated and bowl payouts (with the Gator effectively replaced by the Independence, though the Sun will presumably pay more than the Emerald did). I can only hope that by 2014 the ACC's situation has improved, which is something that is largely in their hands, both on the field and off.

Rating the 2009 Non-Conference Slate, Part 1: ACC

If I were convinced anyone were waiting for this, I'd congratulate you for waiting this long! Anyway, here we go, with the ACC.

1. Virginia Tech (1.75 Legit, 0 DI-AA): (N) Alabama, Marshall, Nebraska, @East Carolina. VPI has, by far, the most interesting OOC schedule of any ACC team this year, and that would probably be true with just the opening weekend game with Alabama in the Georgia Dome. Add to that a game at ECU, Nebraska's return trip, and the lack of any DI-AA teams and we have ourselves a winner. Provided 'Bama and Nebraska are decent, this could even break right for a darkhorse run to the national title game.
   
2. Georgia Tech (1.75, 1): Jacksonville State, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Georgia. The rivalry game with UGA carries the most weight, of course, but playing two other SEC teams (even though they are Vandy and Miss State) allow GT to rack up enough legit points to take second.
3. Miami (1.75, 1): Oklahoma, Florida A&M, @Central Florida, @South Florida. Major props for Oklahoma, though unless this Miami team is drastically better than last year's edition it's hard to see how that will turn out well. Somewhat more minor props for playing both UCF and USF, though I think I speak for most football fans when I say I'd rather see them playing Florida instead of FAMU, UCF, or USF.
   
4. Florida State (1.5, 1): Jacksonville State, @Brigham Young, South Florida, @Florida. The showdown with Florida at the end there is the jewel of this schedule, of course, but FSU deserves some credit for playing in-state Big East rival USF, and also for trekking out to Provo, though I have a feeling I'm more excited about that trip than most of FSU's players.
5. Maryland (1.25, 1): @California, James Madison, Middle Tennessee State, Rutgers. I just Cal ran out of SEC teams to play, as UMD will take up the reigns this year of providing us the third-most interesting inter-sectional game of the year. The rest of this schedule is uninsipring, to say the least.
6. North Carolina State (1.25, 2): South Carolina, Murray State, Gardner-Webb, Pittsburgh. Decent BCS OOC opponents bookend two DI-AA schools. For shame, NCSU, and the ACC I guess - 3 teams have 2 DI-AA opponents, while in the other 5 BCS conferences there are only 3 teams that have done so. (Though I suspect Rutgers may join the 2 DI-AA ranks as well, as I'll explain later.)
7. Boston College (1, 1): Northeastern, Kent, @Notre Dame, Central Michigan. This is where the quality of schedules starts to drop a bit. BC is only up here due to ND's inflated legit ranking, which in a way reflects how overrated ND is anyway.
   
8. Clemson (0.75, 1): Middle Tennessee State, Texas Christian, Coastal Carolina, @South Carolina. Nothing to see here except the obligatory rivalry game, though TCU has the potential to make it interesting.
   
9. Duke (0.75, 2): Richmond, @Army, @Kansas, North Carolina Central. Well, I guess Duke is playing to their level now, but hey, there's two gaurunteed wins here, a probabale win against Army, and well, that's 3/4ths of last year's win total right there!
10. Wake Forest (0.5, 1): Baylor, Stanford, Elon, @Navy. Wake needs to watch out for Baylor, which has a slight chance of not being completely terrible this year. Outside of that, well, maybe they'll make a return trip out here for Stanford in a couple years?
11. North Carolina (0.5, 2): The Citadel, @Connecticut, East Carolina, Georgia Southern. The "I Wish This Were a Basketball Game" series returns, but outside of that, not much to comment on here, other than the usual slap-on-the-wrist for scheduling 2 DI-AA teams.
12. Virginia (0.25, 1): William & Mary, Texas Christian, @Southern Mississippi, Indiana. The sad thing is that TCU and USM are probably more interesting matchups than Indiana, but that's not saying much. And there's still a chance they could go 1-3 on this slate.

Next: The Big East. Stay tuned!

The ACC Jumps The Gun

The following is from the ACC's bowl page. See if you can spot what's wrong!

Rating the Non-Conference Slate, Part 1: ACC

I've been working on this for a few days and unfortunately the time I finally have time to post it is when I'm suffering from some horrendous attack of allergies and/or a cold. I'll try anyway, but I won't make any guarantees about whether or not the following will make any sense at all.

Since the NCAA made the 12th game permanent, there's been various debate over the best use of the 12th game. For most teams, it's a 4th non-conference games. While ideally this is used to play an inter-sectional game (see: Cal and Tennessee) this is normally used to just get away with scheduling a DI-AA team every year. Due to the Big East being gutted by the ACC, they were able to add a 5th non-conference game, but only Syracuse has anything interesting going on. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Pac-10, who used the 12th game to create a full-round robin in their league. In fact, the Pac-10 by far has the highest percentage of teams without a I-AA team on their schedule this year (Arizona will play Northern Arizona).

So for this preview I took a conference-by-conference look at at the "BCS" conferences and ranked teams out-of-conference schedules on the completely subjective criteria of what I consider "legitimate" non-conference teams. Being completely subjective, it's hard to say what's a legit team and what's not, but hopefully there's some semblance of a pattern.

So, without further adieu, here's the Atlantic Coast Conference:

1. Florida State (3 legit teams, 0 DI-AA): UAB, @Colorado, Alabama, and @Florida. Probably the best non-conference slate in all of college football this year. The game against 'Bama is at Jacksonville as well, and they play an away game against a BCS team (even if it Colorado). UAB isn't a total patsy either, but I wasn't sure whether to consider them "legit" for FSU.
2. Miami (FL) (2, 0): Marshall, @Oklahoma, Florida International (HELL 2 DA NAW), Texas A&M. Pretty legit schedule, even if FIU is barely a DI-A team. @OU helps a lot.
3. Georgia Tech (2, 1): @Notre Dame, Samford, Army, Georgia. @Notre Dame is the main thing here - Army and Samford won't strike fear into anyone. Rivalry game against Georgia is huge. But you heard it here first: Tech will beat the Bulldogs this year.
4. Duke (4, 0): UConn, @Northwestern, @Navy, @Notre Dame. 3 road games. Legit because it's entirely likely they're going to lose to all these teams.
5. Maryland (2, 1): Villanova, @Florida International, West Virgina Virginia, @Rutgers. Play 2 of the better Big East teams, wait, hold on - to Florida International? What the heck?
6. Wake Forest (2, 0): Nebraska, Army, @Navy, @Vanderbilt. No DI-AA's is nice, as is the game against Nebraska. Navy and Vandy combine to form a legit non-conference game, even if it is 3/4 Navy and 1/4 Vandy.
   
7. Virginia Tech (1,1): East Carolina, @LSU, Ohio, William & Mary. ECU should apply for honorary membership to the ACC this year (along with Notre Dame). The only thing that makes this schedule stand out is the game @LSU - see what I said above about inter-sectional games. It gets a lot worse from here.
8. Boston College (1, 1): Army, UMass, Bowling Green, @Notre Dame. Amazingly, BC starts the year with three straight conference games. @ND is the only saving grace of the non-conference slate, though.
9. North Carolina (1, 1): James Madison, @East Carolina, @South Florida, South Carolina. Nice series against South Carolina coming up, but @ECU and @USF? How did that happen?
10. NC State (1,1): Central Florida, Wofford, Louisville, @East Carolina. @ECU again? Saving grace is Louisville.
11. Virginia (1, 0): @Wyoming, Pittsburgh, @Middle Tennessee State, UConn. Could perhaps be 2 legit teams, but this schedule is burdened by the fact they ended up going to both Wyoming and MTSU. Really, any of these last few teams could lay claim to the ACC's worst non-conference schedule.
    
12. Clemson (1, 1): UL-Monroe, Furman, Central Michigan, @South Carolina. Absolutely pathetic schedule for this caliber of team.