The mega conferences do hurt non conf scheduling with teams going from four down to three non conf games. The expanded playoffs further kills the conf scheduling, as the incentive is gone.
But sos didn’t really matter as far as making the playoffs. Yes their was some talk as far as the last team in, but that was it, and the stronger sos didn’t win out.
SOS did matter: and it’s why 10-2 Ohio state and Tennessee made the playoffs and 10-2 Miami, BYU, and Memphis did not.
The non conf sos doesn’t matter for B1G and SEC teams because the conf schedule is already strong. Losing a non conf game is far more detrimental as they likely don’t need an sos boost to make the playoff with 1 or two conference losses. There is a reason we don’t see primo non conf matchups as much as we used to. It kind of sucks for the teams from the lesser conferences because no one is going to want to schedule them, so it’s tough for them to even build a strong non conference schedule.
We are seeing more good non conference games than ever, in my opinion
Indiana played 3 Non-Conference dregs, all in Bloomington, and still got in the CFP.
That has absolutely no contradiction from what I stated
I was responding to your "we're seeing more good Non-conference games than ever" aspect.
They got scheduled in conference to play both the teams in the National Championship game from the prior season.
It sounds like starting in 2026 both leagues are going to get 4 teams in automatic.
Disagree that we are seeing fewer
Unless there has been a recent change, the plan is to continue playing The Apple Cup.
I guess there are still a good number, but far less than you saw 20 years ago. Lots of teams are now scheduling all patsies or at most one p4 team. It wasn’t rare to see blue bloods schedule two other strong teams in the past and was more rare to see fcs teams being scheduled.
Week 1
