Tennessee with the 8th hardest schedule, per ESPN

#1
KnoxRealtorVOL

KnoxRealtorVOL

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#1
Now granted, my 3 year old knows more about college football than ESPN these days.

And it's also worth noting that this list loses a ton of credibility by having Ohio State anywhere on it (they don't even play a ranked team until mid-October, one of a whopping 3 they play all year).

But it's still good to know that's the perception of our schedule.


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#4
#4
Pre-season strength of schedule is one of the most useless stats there is. Typically about half the preseason Top 25 doesn't even end up ranked at the end of the year. Teams no one saw coming (like Missouri last year) end up good and teams that were supposed to be very good go 6-6 (like A&M has done several times in recent years). It's enough to throw preseason assessments of schedule strength completely out of wack and make them statistically meaningless.
 
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#5
#5
KnoxRealtorVOL said:
Now granted, my 3 year old knows more about college football than ESPN these days.

And it's also worth noting that this list loses a ton of credibility by having Ohio State anywhere on it (they don't even play a ranked team until mid-October, one of a whopping 3 they play all year).

But it's still good to know that's the perception of our schedule.


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Clearly, having to play Tennessee boosts some of the top 6.
 
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#6
#6
unfrozencvmanvol said:
Pre-season strength of schedule is one of the most useless stats there is. Typically about half the preseason Top 25 doesn't even end up ranked at the end of the year. Teams no one saw coming (like Missouri last year) end up good and teams that were supposed to be very good go 6-6 (like A&M has done several times in recent years). It's enough to throw preseason assessments of schedule strength completely out of wack and make them statistically meaningless.
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Don't even see missouri on there.
 
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#7
#7
Pre-season rankings are more useful than some folks think. Using the nine-season period from 2014 to 2022:

* 7 of 9 times, the #1 pre-season team has made the 4-team playoffs.
* 5 of 9 times, the #2 pre-season team made them.
* 4 of 9 times, the #3 pre-season team got in.

So getting ranked in the top 3, pre-season, was a decent predictor of a team's chances getting into the final top 4 spots.

Funnily, the #4 pre-season team almost never makes the playoffs (1 of 9 times), but the #5 team makes it about half the time (5 of 9). So better statistically to start out at #5 than #4, heh.

The average post-season ranking of every team in the pre-season top 15 is in the top 25. So if you start the season in 1 through 15, you're more likely than not to end the season somewhere top 25. That's not bad.

It gets spottier after that. The #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #23 and #24 spots are statistically likely to end the year top 25, but the #16, #22 and #25 are probably out of it.

All said and done, if you're in the Top 25 pre-season, you're generally likely to be in the Top 25 post-season.

Sure, every year teams crash and burn after starting the year in the Top 25. And teams make the final rankings who weren't even getting votes at the start of the year. Football is a weird game, the ball bounces funny, and "on any given Saturday" is real.

Nonetheless, it is far better to be ranked pre-season than it is not to be. And the higher, the better. You'll end up better off, most of the time.

And this means, as a one-off by-product, pre-season strength of schedule rankings are not as baseless as some might be saying.

Go Vols!


source: a 2023 article on NCAA website: How the AP preseason football poll predicts the College Football Playoff
 
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#13
#13
VFL-82-JP said:
Pre-season rankings are more useful than some folks think. Using the nine-season period from 2014 to 2022:

* 7 of 9 times, the #1 pre-season team has made the 4-team playoffs.
* 5 of 9 times, the #2 pre-season team made them.
* 4 of 9 times, the #3 pre-season team got in.

So getting ranked in the top 3, pre-season, was a decent predictor of a team's chances getting into the final top 4 spots.

Funnily, the #4 pre-season team almost never makes the playoffs (1 of 9 times), but the #5 team makes it about half the time (5 of 9). So better statistically to start out at #5 than #4, heh.

The average post-season ranking of every team in the pre-season top 15 is in the top 25. So if you start the season in 1 through 15, you're more likely than not to end the season somewhere top 25. That's not bad.

It gets spottier after that. The #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #23 and #24 spots are statistically likely to end the year top 25, but the #16, #22 and #25 are probably out of it.

All said and done, if you're in the Top 25 pre-season, you're generally likely to be in the Top 25 post-season.

Sure, every year teams crash and burn after starting the year in the Top 25. And teams make the final rankings who weren't even getting votes at the start of the year. Football is a weird game, the ball bounces funny, and "on any given Saturday" is real.

Nonetheless, it is far better to be ranked pre-season than it is not to be. And the higher, the better. You'll end up better off, most of the time.

And this means, as a one-off by-product, pre-season strength of schedule rankings are not as baseless as some might be saying.

Go Vols!


source: a 2023 article on NCAA website: How the AP preseason football poll predicts the College Football Playoff
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The AP poll is about 50/50 at predicting who finishes as ranked teams. Typically a team will have 3 or 4 at ranked teams on their schedule in the preseason. If the 50% misses are overly represented on your schedule, odds are your team's schedule will have been massively overrated, if the 50% hits are overly represented on your schedule will have been massively underrated. Considering you are only dealing with 3 to 4 teams the potential for overrepresentation or underrepresentation is pretty high. End of the year SOS is far more significant, as are obviously, end of the year rankings. My point is that's it's not worth getting in a tither about what your "preseason strength of schedule" is, one way or another, when it all shakes out, it frequently looks much different.
 
#17
#17
Tennessee has a manageable schedule. It isn't the hardest schedule that I have seen but it isn't an easy schedule either. I personally think teams like Alabama and Oklahoma have harder schedules than Tennessee but Missouri has an easier schedule for example.

Tennessee will always have a top 50 schedule as long as we keep the Alabama, Florida, and Georgia triumvirate. There is always a good chance that at least 2 of those programs will be good. I know Florida is down, but if you go off the star recruits, all three are in the top 20 based on their sitting rosters and Alabama/Georgia are probably the top 2 teams on talent.
 
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#18
#18
KnoxRealtorVOL said:
Now granted, my 3 year old knows more about college football than ESPN these days.

And it's also worth noting that this list loses a ton of credibility by having Ohio State anywhere on it (they don't even play a ranked team until mid-October, one of a whopping 3 they play all year).

But it's still good to know that's the perception of our schedule.


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Every team in the sec inside the top 25 but Missouri who did they pay for that?
 
#20
#20
Volador said:
OK - so let me see if I have this straight. Tennessee is playing 6 of the 7 schools with tougher records than us. Does that make any sense???

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I don't completely get these rankings to be honest. Looking at USCjr's schedule, they don't play UGA but play Bama, LSU, Ole Miss, A&M, OU, and Missouri, plus Clemson.

Their schedule seems tougher than ours.
 
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#23
#23
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