2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 1

The college football season is already underway with last week's Cal-Hawaii game over in Australia. The season really gets underway this week though, as almost everyone opens their season over the next few days.

This is the first of a series of weekly posts that, if you remember how this has worked in prior years, should be familiar. I am going through the entire college football schedule at the FBS level and assigning a score to each team for their non-conference schedule. Most weeks, this will result in a score of zero, but for the three or four non-conference games each team has, they'll get a score between -1 and 3. The exact criteria can be found in the season introductory post.

The purpose of this weekly series is to go by conference and find out which one is doing the best job of scheduling outside of conference boundaries. If it's anything like in years past, the Group of Five conference will be far ahead of the Power Five conferences for a variety of reasons. That may not be apparent through one week of games, though.

So below, you will see the first weekly rankings. Each conference includes its average NCSS score for the week.

1. SEC (1.43). The SEC fanboys will use this argument to prove that their schedule is superior to all others. They have by far the best opening week, but that says little about the rest of the year. There are no FCS games on the table in Week 1, Missouri is on the road at West Virginia, four teams are playing neutral site games against Power Five opponents, Texas A&M hosts UCLA, and Auburn hosts Clemson for another two points apiece.
2. MAC (1.25). I was a little surprised the MAC got beat out for first place after one week, given the road-heavy schedule they faced early on. Four schools are off to play Big Ten opponents, and a few others open on the road as well for a strong start to the non-conference slate. Only Akron, Central Michigan, and Eastern Michigan blemish the conference with early cupcakes.
3. Pac 12 (0.92). The boys out west aren't exactly slouching in Week 1. Oregon State opens at Minnesota, UCLA travels to Texas A&M, USC has a neutral date with Alabama, and Washington and Stanford host Power Five opponents. The score does get dragged down by FCS foes for Oregon, Washington State, Arizona State, and Utah.
4. Mountain West (0.83). The conference's biggest boost comes from an extra game for Hawaii, as they record five points in the opening week thanks to the game in Sydney. Fresno State and Colorado State help with games on the road at Power Five opponents, while Air Force, New Mexico, Utah State, Nevada, San Diego State, and UNLV all lose a point early for playing down a level to start the season.
5. Sun Belt (0.82). Appalachian State and South Alabama are on the road to face SEC opposition, while New Mexico State and Texas State both open on the road as well. Georgia Southern, Idaho, Louisiana Monroe and Troy all host FCS opposition to kick off their seasons.
6. Big Ten (0.79). The B1G opens a little slow with Maryland, Michigan State, Illinois, and Purdue all starting with cupcakes, but we've got a couple nice tough starts like Rutgers opening at Washington, a game at Lambeau Field for Wisconsin against LSU, Minnesota opening at home against Oregon State, and a ton of credit goes to Indiana for not only starting on the road, but starting at Florida International.
7. Conference USA (0.69). Florida Atlantic, Middle Tennessee, Old Dominion, and UTSA all dig a little bit of a hole for C-USA, but they get a boost from Louisiana Tech and Southern Mississippi opening at SEC opponents. Florida International also gets a couple points for hosting Indiana.
8. American Athletic (0.17). A majority of the conference starts in the red, as Cincinnati, Connecticut, East Carolina, UCF, South Florida, Memphis, and Navy all get lower level opponents to open their slates. Tulane plays Wake Forest to counteract some of this, while Houston gets what is technically a neutral site game against Oklahoma for a couple points (though a home game wouldn't have changed their score any).
9. ACC (0.14). Point drops are fairly abundant as NC State, Syracuse, Duke, Miami (FL), Pitt, Virginia, and Virginia Tech all start with FCS opponents. North Carolina and Florida State getting neutral site games against SEC opponents can only reverse the damage so much.
10. Big 12 (0.10). A majority of the conference gets dessert out of the way: Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, TCU, and Texas Tech all open with D-IAA opponents. The only real positives for the conference come from Kansas State opening at Stanford and West Virginia hosting Missouri.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

 

Photo by David McIntyre (Star-Advertiser)

It's not displayed in the list here, but the spreadsheet does show scores for the four independents. I just don't count them as a conference because their NCSS scores will end up greatly inflated compared to everyone else's. In the interest of full disclosure though, they start with an average score of 2.50.

This will change a lot over the next couple weeks before we settle into a pretty clear pattern: the Group of Five will be at the top, the Power Five will be at the bottom, and the SEC will end up in the basement until the final weekend when the Big 12 playing only three non-conference games catches up with them.

Normally, I would follow this up with a post on Monday about Playoff Points. However, such a post would be pointless both literally and figuratively, because every team would still have no Playoff Points. As such, the first one in that series will come a week from Monday. Instead, I will be back with the Week 2 NCSS scores a week from today.