The Schedule of Thirds

The Big Ten strength-of-schedule discussion, shortened.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Dividing by three is rarely anyone’s first choice, but in an 18-team Big Ten, with its much-discussed 9-game conference schedule, it can be convenient. It’s going to help us to zoom out on the conference today, which I find useful after trying to zoom in all offseason.

I’m more guilty of this than most as the guy who rushes to project point spreads, win probabilities and totals any time there’s a new set of power rankings released. That’s useful information for level setting and a good discussion for February, when football feels far away, but there is a risk of putting too fine a point on things.

For example, you could say based on the initial SP+ ratings Nebraska might be favored in nine games this season. But more than half of those games are probably in tossup territory,¹ so it sounds better than it’s likely to be.

A bigger-picture way to look at this, and compare conference schedules, is to simply divide the Big Ten into thirds and tally how many games each team plays by tier. Think of it as the strength-of-schedule discussion shortened.