Playing Ranked NC Opponents

[mplsbadger]

Number of ranked NC opponents played each year over the last five seasons.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4436844

The interesting observation here is that only 33 out of 117 teams have averaged playing one ranked NC team per season.

To me this argues for having a scheduling objective of playing one ranked team per year in the NC schedule. This would put you in the top quartile. You can meet this objective by scheduling one team who is perennially ranked, or two who are sometimes ranked. The rest in my opinion should be MAC teams or teams where there is high fan interest like Hawaii, UNLV, NDSU, SDSt, etc.

At worst, if you assume a loss you need to go 6-5 the rest of the way to get into a bowl game - the old standard before 12 game seasons. If you play a ranked team and win, it can make for a special season.

 

[Go Gophers Rah]

The problem with using ranked opponents as a metric is that most ooc games (especially those against BCS teams) are inked years in advance. We are currently scheduled to play Oregon State in 2015. Will they be ranked? Will they be wearing their man-bra (or "bro") uniforms? Will Brett Favre be in the middle of "the hardest decision he's ever made?" Who the hell knows.

I would love to see the Big Ten implement a policy allowing no more than 1 FCS opponent and at least one opponent from an automatic qualifying BCS conference.