2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 2

With NFL previews now finished, I'm back to the college scene. Last week saw some compelling games and great moments, while we also saw a few schools that I condemned for scheduling FCS teams lose to said FCS teams. To those schools: you deserve it. Pansies.

With that out of the way, we should move on to what's going on this week. I'm building up the Road-Home Disparity Index as the season goes on, but it's still too early to post those since that's an end of the season metric, as are playoff points (though I might do a partial count as we get closer to the end of the year and I start doing early playoff seedings). So for now, I'm stuck doing just nonconference scheduling rankings. If you want to see last week's, you can find them here. The numbers in parentheses show this week's average score for the conference first, then their total average for the season to date. Rankings are done based on the season average. Here are this week's scores:

1. Mountain West (1.08, 2.67; LW: 1). San Diego State, San Jose State and Hawaii all hit the road to face major conference opponents. Their weekly score is down from last week thanks to Fresno State, Nevada and Boise State, but not enough to bump them from the top spot.
2.Conference USA (1.07, 2.50; LW: 3). Middle Tennessee, Southern Mississippi, and UAB are all heading out to face either ACC or SEC opponents, which added tons of points here. Marshall and Louisiana Tech scheduled cupcakes this week, which might have kept them from putting Conference USA at the top.
3. MAC (0.77, 2.31; LW: 2). These guys fell despite tough trips for Buffalo, Miami-Ohio, Eastern Michigan and Toledo. Byes and reasonable scheduling brought it down a bit, but they were hurt by Akron, Massachusetts, and Central and Western Michigan going I-AA this week.
4. Big Ten (0.83, 1.92; LW: 4). For full disclosure: Last week's Penn State/Syracuse game was played at a neutral site and I either missed that initially or something changed. That has been reflected in my rankings, and brought the total score down some, but not enough to move them from this spot. There's no road trips to face other BCS conference opponents this week, but there are some tough games (Northwestern's home date with Syracuse might not be "tough" per se but it's a game between BCS schools). Ultimately, Iowa, Purdue and Wisconsin are this week's culprits for scheduling FCS teams.
5. Sun Belt (0.88, 1.88; LW: 6). These guys jump up a spot thanks largely to Western Kentucky, Louisiana-Lafayette and Arkansas State. They could have easily jumped another spot if the rest of the conference were as bold; Georgia State, Louisiana-Monroe, Texas State and Troy all take the easy way out Saturday.
6. American Athletic (0.70, 1.40; LW: 8). Cincy and South Florida head up to the Midwest to face Big Ten opposition, which is good. UConn apparently needs a week to recover from their loss to Towson (suckers), and Louisville, Rutgers and SMU all take the easy way out this week too. Maybe one of them will suffer UConn's fate.
7. SEC (0.21, 1.36; LW: 5). I think this is how it usually goes. The SEC schedules pretty well in the opening week to keep up appearances about being "the best conference in the nation" or whatever, then in Week 2 goes the pansy route. Florida's trip to Miami wasn't enough to keep the SEC from having the weakest schedule of the week. Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M are the main culprits there.
8. ACC (0.64, 1.29; LW: 9). Syracuse deserves those 3 points for a trip to Northwestern, who might turn out to be a major contender this year; we'll have to see. Duke heads to American Athletic foe Memphis (and I almost didn't give them full credit... I'll figure out conferences eventually), but that's it for good scheduling. Clemson, North Carolina State and Virginia Tech all thought decent to good scheduling in Week 1 was a good excuse to slate some FCS squads in Week 2.
9. Pac-12 (0.25, 1.08; LW: 7). Oregon travels to Virginia and Arizona visits UNLV, which is to be commended. More schools should hit the road to face those smaller schools once or twice a year. This week's low score though can largely be blamed on Cal, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
10. Big 12 (0.30, 0.70; LW: 10). I know, it's a small conference, but when Kansas, TCU and Texas Tech are scheduling DI-AA teams you're not going to get a good score. An Oklahoma State trip to UTSA should be given serious props, and Texas is heading out to BYU, so not all is lost.

In case you're curious, through 2 weeks of looking at schedules, with 6 points, Buffalo, Toledo and Louisiana-Lafayette have the "toughest" non conference schedules so far. It's not a perfect science, since going on the road to face, say, Minnesota isn't much of a challenge, but I needed a consistent metric for non-conference scheduling. This is also why I added the Playoff Points and the RHDI to this year's analysis. By the way, the weasel count in FBS football is up to 63 schools (HALF of all teams at this level), with an astounding 34 scheduling cupcakes this week.

On a quick NFL note, Nathaniel and I are in fact picking NFL games against the spread. He'll have our picks over on Someone Still Loves You, Alberto Riveron later today.