2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 1

Ah, it's good to be back and doing some number crunching. At least at its highest level, NCAA football begins tonight. There are only a handful of games though, with most of the action starting on Saturday. Nonetheless, I need to get started on crunching the numbers.

Earlier this week I highlighted the formulas I will be using this year, but of the three, I can really only use one of them at this stage. The Road-Home Disparity Index is best saved for the end of the year to account for any cancellations and what have you, and it's much too early to factor in Playoff Points. As such, we're going back to the Non Conference Schedule Strength. What I did in the early part of the season last year was rank each team's point total, but I didn't really release that information until later on when there was a decent sample size and I could start thinking about playoff seeds.

Instead for the first few weeks, I'm going to look at this by conference. Since these conferences range in size from as few as 7 teams to as many as 14, I need to give each conference's score as an average (rounded to the nearest hundreth of a point). I'm sure you'll see a theme pretty early on. So without further ado, here's the initial rankings based on the opening week:

1. Mountain West (1.58). San Diego State, San Jose State and Air Force all scheduled FCS teams, but this is more than offset by 5 teams going to power conference schools. Others get tough opponents or go on the road. Strong starting schedule (which of course will somewhat penalize the tougher conferences, but not too badly).
2. MAC (1.53). Having an extra team compared to the Mountain West doesn't really help when it comes to computing averages, (the sum score for the MAC was 1 point higher) but average is more fair. Kent State, Ball State and Eastern Michigan all face FCS squads, but 6 MAC schools go on the road to face BCS opponents.
3. Conference USA (1.42). Middle Tennessee moved conferences, but they still host a D-IAA opponent, as will Tulsa. This was offset by 4 trips to "big-time" schools. Their sum score actually matched the MAC's as well, but having 14 schools will lower the average.
4. Big Ten (1.17). The highest of the BCS conferences, this is helped by having only a couple schools hosting weak opponents (granted, it's Illinois and Indiana, but still). Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue all travel to face BCS opponents from another conference. (Random aside/possible additional unprovoked shot at the U of I: ESPN Chicago producer Adam Abdalla, who I used to intern for a few years back, came up with a great hash tag for Illini football. Use at your leisure.)
5. SEC (1.14). Part of me was a little surprised they were this high, but we have to remember last year that these guys, for being so "elite" backloaded their schedules with cupcakes (I think as a ploy to cheat the already corrupt BCS). Missouri and Tennessee are the only transgressors this week, countered by Mississippi State and Georgia visiting other BCS schools. Alabama and LSU play neutral site games against other power conference schools, and Krntucky also has a neutral game. South Carolina and Auburn host schools from those conferences too. Not bad.
6. Sun Belt (1.00). Then there's these guys, who have 3 teams (South Alabama, Georgia State, Arkansas State) playing FCS schools, with only 2 teams hitting the road to face BCS opponents. It's enough to average out as each team hosting another FBS school, but still.
7. Pac-12 (0.83). Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona get punished for facing those smaller schools, and this score does get dragged down due to byes by Arizona State and Stanford. California and Arizona State do get kudos though for starting their schedules on the road at BCS opponents.
8. American Athletic (0.7). The former Big East doesn't start too well, with Connecticut, Houston and South Florida pigging out. Memphis is off, and the rest of the conference isn't helped by the lack of big time opponents (though Rutgers and Temple do have decent trips scheduled).
9. ACC (0.64). North Carolina visiting South Carolina is the only thing keeping the ACC really afloat this week. If it weren't also for Clemson hosting Georgia and Virginia Tech's game against Alabama, they'd be really screwed. Boston College, Wake Forest, Duke and Georgia Tech have FCS teams lined up this weekend.
10. Big 12 (0.4). TCU's neutral site game against LSU helps, as does Oklahoma State hosting Mississippi State, but Baylor, Iowa State, West Virginia and Kansas State all host FCS teams. The Kansas State one is hard, seeing as they're playing defending champion North Dakota State, but I have to stick to my guns on this. (This is more of an attack on KSU than a diss of NDSU, I have family up there!)

Next week I'll include a weekly score as well as an overall score through two weeks of scheduling stuff. It'll still be too early to even really look at Playoff Points or RHDI though, so it'll still just be this metric.