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Respected college football writer Kevin McGuire, who works for NBC’s College Football Talk, among others, spent the offseason designing a system that compares strength of schedule.
The self-named McGuire Metric is a simple formula that rates strength of schedule using the AP poll, whether the game is home, away or neutral and whether the opponent is a power-conference team.
By that method, Texas A&M’s road win at South Carolina ranked as the most impressive victory in the country in Week 1, followed by LSU’s neutral-site victory against Wisconsin and Georgia’s home win against Clemson.
The SEC dominated his strength of schedule comparison chart after Week 1 with 21 points, followed by the Pac-12 (eight), Conference USA (seven), the Big Ten (six) and the ACC (three).
Using my made-up way to weigh SOS results, top performers thru today:
1. Texas A&M (14.0)
2. LSU (10.5)
3. Georgia (6.5)
4. Five tied (2.5)— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) September 5, 2014
Basically, using this formula, Texas A&M has the most valuable win of the season. LSU has the second most valuable win, followed by Georgia.
— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) September 5, 2014
I have no clue how these numbers will look at the end of the season, but hopefully it yields some sort of insight to the value of wins.
— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) September 5, 2014
The SEC schedule is admittedly weak this weekend, but conference teams can take solace in what was overall a pretty strong opening weekend in terms of performance and strength of schedule.
As impressive as it was to watch Texas A&M pummel South Carolina on the road, we may not know whether the Aggies are worthy of their newfound high ranking until October. Texas A&M plays Lamar this weekend, followed by games against Rice, SMU and Arkansas.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
