BCS Strength of Schedule

The announcement of the BCS bowl games got me to thinking. Does strength of schedule play any real part in determining the BCS assignments? After some research, I've come to the conclusion that no, they do not. The following are the schedule strengths for the BCS teams, and others that could have made a case.

#1 Ohio State: 75th
#2 LSU: 57th
#3 Virginia Tech: 52nd
#4 Oklahoma: 66th
#5 Georgia: 44th
#6 Missouri: 38th
#7 USC: 61st
#8 Kansas: 106th
#9 West Virginia: 60th
#10 Hawaii: 119th
#11 Arizona State: 58th
#12 Florida: 41st
#13 Illinois: 54th


Each rating is out of 119 Division I teams. Some notes I made:

• Of the top 13 teams, the team with the toughest schedule was not invited to a BCS bowl game.


• Mizzou had just the same amount of wins as 5 BCS teams, more wins than 4 BCS teams, and less wins than 1 BCS team. And a tougher schedule than each and every one of them.


• Ohio State's schedule was not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's still the third worst of the top 13 teams, but not by a huge amount.


• Hawaii played the nation's worst schedule. The worst.


• Anyone that tries to make a case for Hawaii to be in the national championship game is thicker than Mark Mangino's neck. There are probably 25-30 teams that could run the table playing Hawaii's schedule. Hawaii might have well played 12 high school football teams.


• Everyone pushes the SEC as the toughest conference, and it may as well be the toughest conference, but Mizzou has the statistically toughest schedule of any contenders, SEC or otherwise.


• The toughest schedule went to Duke, an ACC team...go figure.

These are the official BCS rankings. The rankings go from 1 to -1, with 0 being a fairly even schedule, 1 being playing all undefeated teams on the road and -1 being playing a schedule of winless teams at home. Duke had the toughest schedule at 0.410 and Hawaii had the softest schedule at -0.475. Hawaii's schedule rating was 0.097 lower than the 118th rated team (Boise State).