The funny thing is there really isn't a consensus source for ranking SOS.
That is because there isn't a clear question that we are asking when we ask "who played the toughest schedule?"
If your 5th grade math teacher asked you to solve this problem, you would have probably done something like add up the winning percentage of a team's opponents. There are obvious problems with this. One is that it says nothing about the schedule your opponent's played. We played a lot of MAC teams and the MAC teams that we played also played a lot of MAC teams. This helps pull our opponents winning percentage up closer to .500 because our MAC opponents are exactly .500 when playing each other. The converse of this is true in the SEC.
Now, there are predictive computer rankings that take into account more data and, in general, do a good job of predicting the actual betting spread of most games. So, we could average our opponents ratings and say how good our average opponent was but.....
Let me give you two schedules
Schedule A:
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #131, #132, #133, #134, #135, #136
Schedule B:
#62, #63, #64, #65, #66, #67, #68, #69, #70, #71, #72, #73
If you were, say the #15 team you might most likely go 8-4 vs. A but 11-1 against B
If you were #120, you might most likely go 4-8 vs. A and 1-11 against B
The average predictive rating of the two schedules is almost identical. How difficult the schedule is ISN'T the same at all and which one IS more difficult is dependant on who is playing the schedule.
So you have resume computer rankings that actually try to state how difficult the record was to put up against the schedule. Even this question is not as direct as it sounds.
When we were discussing tiebreakers I stated in the USA we tend to admire teams with good wins and bad losses over teams that had neither. Can you hear Herbstreit yelling "Who did they beat?" There isn't much of an actual historical reason to believe that the former is more indicative of a better team than the latter. ESPN FPI "strength of record" asks "what are the odds that the #12 ranked team could put up as good of a record or better that the team did against their schedule?" Do you see where I am going? "What are the odds that the #12 ranked team could put up as good of a record or WORSE that the team did against their schedule?" is probably just about as important of a question to ask. The upshot of this is that it slightly favor's teams with difficult schedules and more losses. FPI SOR is more likely to rank Alabama and Texas ahead of BYU, Notre Dame, and Miami than a lot of systems trying to to a similar sort of ranking for this reason.
Last Edited: 12/9/2025 3:31:59 PM by Victory