Schedule strength has dominated the college football conversation all offseason. It was a point of order during discussions about the way the College Football Playoff was seeded and then again during discussions about further Playoff expansion. When SEC schools gathered for spring meetings and the “8 vs. 9” debate raged again, schedule strength was at the forefront of the conversation.
Should the SEC play 9 conference games? Some within the conference will argue that playing 8 games against SEC competition is still a more daunting task than playing 9 games against, say, a Big 12 schedule. And they’d have a point.
This week, Kelley Ford has been unveiling his preseason power ratings for the new year. In addition to those ratings, Ford has calculated schedule strength by looking at the number of wins the No. 12-rated team would expect to win against each team’s schedule. (Ford has explained that he uses a historical average to calculate the 12th-rated team, not what the 12th-rated team is at any given point in time.)
Using Ford’s ratings, the No. 12 team would expect to win 6.5 games against the Arkansas Razorbacks’ schedule in 2025 — the fewest of any in the country. Put another way: The 12th-best team in college football would barely make a bowl game if it played the schedule Arkansas will face in 2025. Alabama athletic director Greg Byrnes is somewhere nodding in silent approval.
The No. 12 team would be expected to win 6.6 games against the Florida schedule.
The No. 12 team would be expected to win 6.8 games against the Mississippi State schedule.
See where we’re going with this?
Every single SEC team has a top-25 strength of schedule, according to Kelley Ford’s ratings. Thirteen of the 15 toughest schedules in the country belong to SEC teams. Nine of the 10 toughest schedules belong to SEC teams.
v1 Schedule Difficulty Rankings!The No. 12 power-rated team would be expected to win just 6.5 regular season games against Arkansas’ schedule pic.twitter.com/WHv6BKUAld
— Kelley Ford (@KFordRatings) June 20, 2025Here’s how the rest of the power conferences stack up:
Big Ten: 1 top-10 schedule (Wisconsin, No. 8), 7 top-25 schedules, 18 top-50 schedules ACC: 0 top-10 schedules, 2 top-25 schedules (Syracuse, No. 16; Florida State, No. 24), 11 top-50 schedules Big 12: 0 top-10 schedules, 0 top-25 schedules, 4 top-50 schedules (Baylor, No. 38; Oklahoma State, No. 41; TCU, No. 45; Colorado, No. 49)None of the Big Ten’s contenders play a top-25 schedule. The 12th-rated team would be expected to win 8.5 games against Ohio State’s schedule. Even with a game against Texas in Week 1, Ohio State’s schedule would rate as the 26th-toughest. Penn State has the No. 33 schedule. Oregon has the No. 37 schedule.
The 12th-rated team would be expected to win 8.8 games against the Miami (No. 30) and the Clemson (No. 31) schedules.
Last year’s Big 12 champion and the conference’s lone representative in the Playoff, Arizona State, has a schedule that rates 60th. The 12th-rated team would be expected to win 9.6 games against the Sun Devils’ schedule. Kansas State and Texas Tech are 2 preseason darlings to challenge for the Big 12, and thus a spot in the CFP, and both of their schedules would be expected to produce 9.7 wins.
Compare that with a team like Alabama, which might once again find itself on the bubble for an at-large bid. The Tide went 9-3 last season with a disastrously ugly loss to Oklahoma late in the year. But Alabama argued that 9 wins against its schedule, which also featured a road out-of-conference game against Wisconsin, was good enough to warrant entry. When Alabama was turned away, Kalen DeBoer said it felt like Alabama was knocked for playing more games against good teams.
“We want to play competitive games. We want to play in the best games. That definitely wasn’t rewarded, it felt like,” DeBoer said.
Power ratings have their blind spots, but Ford’s are usually strong. Last year, Ford’s ratings perfectly predicted every round of the CFP leading to the national championship. Ford had Notre Dame beating Ohio State in the title game, which was the only thing his model missed.
This year, Ford’s ratings project Texas to emerge from the regular season with the most wins of any SEC team. Alabama, Georgia, and Ole Miss are all projected to clear 9 wins. A year after the SEC was limited to 3 spots in the CFP, the selection committee might have a few more 9-3 teams on its hands to deal with.
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Power model illustrates just how grueling the 2025 SEC schedule is Saturday Down South.
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