Which Teams Could Gators, SEC Add in 2020 Based on Strength of Schedule?
Editors note: Previously the schedules included one conflict which has since been addressed: South Carolina is now playing Mississippi State instead of Ole Miss, Ole Miss is now playing Kentucky instead of South Carolina.
With the SEC announcing a brand-new 10-game, conference-only-schedule to take place beginning on Sept. 26 this year, many have been left wondering, who will they play?
In the SEC, the conference is broken up into two divisions, the east, and west. In a typical year, each team will play every team from their respective divisions and will play two teams from a cross-divisional opponent. For the Gators and all other SEC teams, those games will remain, however, two games have yet to be filled by all programs.
According to Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger, the SEC intends to "craft a scheduling model that potentially is weighted on strength of schedule. Basically, they’ll attempt to be as fair as possible."
While there is not clear how the SEC will devise its schedule, the use of the strength of schedule (SOS) typically allows for a more fair and methodological assignment of games, allowing for each team to play other programs that align with their rivals. For instance, fans may point to Florida's schedule this year, mocking it as an "easy" schedule aside from their matchups against LSU and Georgia.
Those fans would be correct, for the most part, as Florida has been thought to have one of the easiest schedules in the SEC during this offseason.
We at Sports Illustrated - AllGators have attempted to give it our best shot, assigning each team a schedule that makes sense, based wholly on strength of schedule.
There is no basic formula to calculate the strength of schedule, however, an old method based on the way in which college football calculated the BCS rankings seems to make sense.
The method is simple, calculate the team's opponents winning percentage, calculated the team's opponents' opponents winning percentage, put it in a formula, and there you have it.
*Disclaimer: We used the team's overall record from last season, including any bowl games, and only included the programs each team is slated to play to construct the SOS, that is the six divisional opponents and two cross-divisional opponents.
For example, Florida is currently slated to play Kentucky (8-5), South Carolina (4-8), LSU (15-0), Missouri (6-6), Vanderbilt (3-9), Ole Miss (4-8), Tennessee (8-5) and Georgia (12-2). Their opponents win % is .5825 and their opponents' opponents win % is .589242, while their strength of schedule is .584764.
We did not take into account whether a team is home or away, nor did we take into account future schedule conflicts. Regardless, there will be some conflicts whether we or the SEC creates the schedule.
With that, let's see how each program in the SEC did as far as their strength of schedule:
Team Ranks by SOS, Credit: Demetrius Harvey SI AllGators
By our metrics, South Carolina has the most difficult schedule at .6392, playing Georgia (11-2), Florida (11-2) and LSU (15-0) this year as their most-difficult opponents. While Missouri has the easiest schedule at .5551, playing Georgia (12-2), Kentucky or Tennessee (8-5) and Florida (11-2) as their most-difficult opponents.
However, in order to make the system even fairer, we took the teams and placed them in order from the best-worst by their overall record last season.
With that, here are the two opponents each team might face off against this fall:
SEC Matchups, Credit: Demetrius Harvey SI AllGators
For Florida, according to this, they're slated to play Alabama and Texas A&M, which will absolutely boost their overall SOS, and allow them to finally face off against Alabama, something fans have (or, perhaps, have not) wanted to happen for quite some time. This is based solely on the team's SOS along with the final rankings for the team.
The Gators had an opportunity to play Mississippi State, however, an imbalance could have occurred. The last time the Gators faced off against Alabama was in the 2016 SEC Championship game. Alabama defeated Florida 54-16.
Here is the Gators' projected schedule, while assigned, the location of both new games could vary and are not based on anything of note, as mentioned above:
Gators Schedule, Credit: Demetrius Harvey SI Gators
For example, Arkansas (2-10), the conference's worst team - according to last year's standings -, was given South Carolina (4-8) and Vanderbilt (3-9). Arkansas is heading into the season with one of the toughest schedules in the SEC.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, in a recent appearance on the SEC Network with Paul Finebaum made it clear the conference had not yet decided on a schedule, however, that schedule could be coming very soon.
“I know our colleagues in the ACC were able to put out the match-ups quickly, and obviously (there are) some different dynamics there,” he said.
“Our two other colleague conferences that made announcements earlier in July took a bit of time to make their announcement, in fact, we’re still waiting. So, we just want to make sure that we walk through what is a really difficult decision on altering the season, and then we’ll work towards finalizing exactly that format and be ready to go. I think in short order, with that information.”
In the meantime, we have laid out what could be similar to what the SEC ultimately decides, however, knowing the law of averages it will likely be vastly different. Regardless, this experiment is sure to entice fans who are already coming up with their own schedules in anticipation of what will be a very interesting college football season.
For full disclosure, the spreadsheet created to determine all of the calculations, including the schedules can be viewed here. Disclaimer: It could also include some typos. Let us know what you think.
