2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 12

Buckle in. This one could get heated.

We're onto one of the final weeks of the college football season, but this one is probably the most controversial of all the weeks that I do a Non-Conference Schedule Strength rankings. And really, it's mostly Nick Saban's and Greg Sankey's fault. But more on that later.

If you read last week's post,  you may remember it being formatted weird. I've fixed it now though and it should be working okay. Otherwise, things stayed the same: the Group of Five conferences have the toughest non-conference schedules and there are a ton of cupcakes amongst the Power Five. Don't let delusion Alabama fans claim otherwise.

So below, I will take a look at the non-conference games for this week by conference. They will get a score for the week, which then gets added to their cumulative season total. Here's the updated rankings.

1. Conference USA: 0.46; 6.62 (LW: 1). Florida Atlantic visits Florida and Charlotte visits Kentucky.
2. Sun Belt: 0.55; 6.18 (LW: 3). Idaho visits Auburn and Georgia Southern visits Georgia.
3. MAC: 0.00; 6.15 (LW: 2). No change.
4. Mountain West: 0.17; 5.58 (LW: 4). Fresno State visits BYU.
5. American Athletic: 0.17; 5.58 (LW: 5). No change.
6. Big Ten: 0.14; 5.07 (LW: 6). Rutgers visits Army.
7. ACC: 0.07; 3.36 (LW: 8). Boston College visits Notre Dame while Florida State hosts FCS Chattanooga.
8. Pac-12: 0.00; 3.33 (LW: 7). No change.
9. Big XII: 0.00; 3.00 (LW: 9). No change.
10. SEC: 0.14; 2.86 (LW: 10). Florida hosts Florida Atlantic, Auburn hosts Idaho, Georgia hosts Georgia Southern, and Kentucky hosts Charlotte. South Carolina hosts FCS The Citadel and Alabama hosts FCS Charleston Southern.

If you want to see the updated rankings, you can view them here. All the blue zeroes indicate conference games, while black zeroes are bye weeks.

For full disclosure on the independents: they have an average NCSS of 19, an inflation because they have no conference homes, so they don't get ranked here. I do think it is important to make note of them, at least.

Meanwhile, my rage at the SEC is a little misguided, because Florida State out of the ACC also pulled a "let's play a cupcake our second to last week of the season" card from the deck, which makes Jimbo Fisher as big a coward as Nick Saban and Shawn Elliott. I've already gotten called out for calling Nick Saban and Alabama cowards on an ESPN board by idiot Bama fans who keep touting "OUR SCHEDULE IS THE TOUGHEST!" Not really; their NCSS is 3, just above the conference average and were I to rerank it all, probably middle of the pack nationally. Obviously, other metrics back up their schedule toughness, but I maintain that it is cowardice to play this game as the 11th on your schedule out of 12. Play it early in the year, and if you want a "break" or whatever stupid logic you come up with, do what Georgia or Florida are doing and at least play an FBS program.

I'm going to stop here for the week before I get too off kilter. This coming weekend is a busy one for me with North Central's Tip Off Tournament taking place, but I will try to be back on Monday with an updated look at the weekend.