The Big Ten’s Strength-Of-Schedule Commitment: Structure Matters Most

At Big Ten Media Days, commissioner Jim Delany did something that should not surprise anyone. He announced a conference “strength-of-schedule commitment” as a way of improving standards and boosting the resumes of each member program:

This development contains legitimate news value, but it is also carries significance primarily because of a structural adjustment the Big Ten is about to make. In other words, this move deals with a situation that was already going to change. It’s not as though the Big Ten took a static landscape and applied a fresh philosophy to a fixed structure. This is a new philosophy being applied in advance of the arrival of a new conference framework next season.

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What change will soon affect the Big Ten? In the Football Schedules story above, the most important item is that the conference will go to a nine-game league schedule next season, joining the Pac-12 and Big 12. When you realize that the added conference game removes one of four discretionary scheduling slots for conference programs, it becomes far easier to make a “strength-of-schedule commitment.”

Yes, the Big Ten should be praised for going to a nine-game schedule. Yet, let’s be levelheaded here: Had the Big Ten remained at eight league games next season, such a pronouncement by Delany would represent a much more powerful statement. Not succumbing to FCS temptation with four non-conference bites at the apple would represent a particularly commendable show of restraint, especially in light of this fact:

With only three non-conference games to schedule next season, Big Ten schools would find it hard to schedule an FCS team as one of the three games, even without a strength-of-schedule commitment. Just look at how Baylor was kept out of the College Football Playoff — the Bears went the FCS route with the three non-conference games on their slate. That should have already told playoff contenders — forcefully and consequentially — they can’t schedule FCS teams.

With only three bites at the non-conference apple starting next year, you’ll see Big Ten teams schedule one game against a decent (if not really good) power conference team; one against the MAC or Sun Belt; and a third game against either The American or the lower tiers of the Power 5. These schedules might not (read: probably won’t) be eye-popping, but they’ll almost surely be better than previous years. FCS fat is getting trimmed, and Power 5 nutrition is being added.

Skipping the FCS is the easy part of this shift in scheduling emphasis, thanks to the reduction in non-conference game slots. The recommendation by Delany to play a Power 5 opponent means even more than the FCS prohibition, because it means that a three-MAC or three-Sun Belt diet is out of the question. Coaches and athletic directors will earn their money in terms of how well they perceive they can afford certain levels of risk, balanced against the extent to which they need high-profile victories.

Last season, Ohio State did a very good job of creating a four-game non-conference lineup. Navy, Cincinnati, and Virginia Tech all reached bowl games, though none of them attained a particularly lofty level during the regular season. Ohio State didn’t produce spectacular wins out of conference, but beating Navy away from home and Cincinnati at home gave the Buckeyes some meat on the bone. Thanks to those three games, the Buckeyes could schedule Kent State from the MAC as the fourth non-conference game and not pay a price for doing so. The team’s resume was deemed worthy of College Football Playoff inclusion despite a stinging loss at home to Virginia Tech.

In future Big Ten seasons, programs will have to see if they can do exactly what Ohio State did in 2014, or if they have to pull a few levers to create a more challenging schedule (and do well against it, of course) in order to get to the playoff. What happens in this year’s playoff chase — regardless of whether Ohio State does or doesn’t get in — could very well alter the thought processes of each Big Ten program.

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Here’s one final note about the Big Ten’s move, and why it is unsurprising in a larger context: The league’s attempt to play the Pac-12 in a non-conference series fell through. Remember that one? Big Ten and Pac-12 teams were going to line up and play each other in one non-conference game. When that deal collapsed, the Big Ten wanted to have something else to fill in the gap. Moving to the Pac’s nine-game league schedule and sticking in a Power 5 non-conference component represent Jim Delany’s best attempts to adjust.

In conclusion, this is not some abrupt philosophical change by the Big Ten, so let’s not make too much of that angle. However, just the same, it remains that the conference has taken several steps forward for itself. In so doing, the Big Ten has also made future college football seasons more palatable to fans.

How much more palatable? Let’s see how Big Ten schools schedule their non-conference games in the future. Then we’ll be in a position to say more.