[dabigv13]

The SOS debate has been raging all year. The fact is, you beat who is on the schedule and that's all you can do.

It all comes down to who decides what the strength of schedule is. Teams from major conferences don't play often during the season. It's really only during bowl games that you can compare based on head to head competition of any sort. Now, when all the teams in your conference play their bowl games at least ~2000 miles from their home stadium that clearly has an effect. So, naturally the bowl record suffers at the end of the season which leads to lower preseason rankings, which are nearly impossible to climb out of during the following season. However, the Big 10's bowl record in the BCS era isn't nearly as bad as the media would have you believe. Especially when you consider that the Big 10 has had multiple teams in BCS bowls the majority of these years, bumping other teams up in the bowl pecking order and sometimes leading to wildly mismatched teams that really have no business playing each other. However, to get respect you still have to win games. The Pac 12 hasn't historically gotten as much respect from the media either, but that has changed in recent years somewhat due to consistently good showings in the bowl season.

I would argue that the biggest determining factor in a team's so-called "strength of schedule" is media perception and the previous year's bowl games. What should it be based on? I don't know. However, I take all "strength of schedule" debates with a grain of salt.

In the end it comes down to winning the games you have to win, regardless of any other factors. I'd just caution you about using ESPN's logic, because according to them we were supposed to lose about 4 or 5 games this year that were all won by double digits.

Hopefully that doesn't come across as whiny or argumentative, but comparing strength of schedule when teams from different conferences haven't played each other much in the current season is sort of silly.

Well, except that Sagarin's numbers have no input from any sort of perception or preseason ranking, it's all interconnected. The fact is that the Pac-12 had an outstanding out of conference record this year, and the Big-10 has not. Sure it would be nice if there were more high quality OOC games between major conference members, but there's still plenty of data to go by.

[dabigv13]

The SOS debate has been raging all year. The fact is, you beat who is on the schedule and that's all you can do.

It all comes down to who decides what the strength of schedule is. Teams from major conferences don't play often during the season. It's really only during bowl games that you can compare based on head to head competition of any sort. Now, when all the teams in your conference play their bowl games at least ~2000 miles from their home stadium that clearly has an effect. So, naturally the bowl record suffers at the end of the season which leads to lower preseason rankings, which are nearly impossible to climb out of during the following season. However, the Big 10's bowl record in the BCS era isn't nearly as bad as the media would have you believe. Especially when you consider that the Big 10 has had multiple teams in BCS bowls the majority of these years, bumping other teams up in the bowl pecking order and sometimes leading to wildly mismatched teams that really have no business playing each other. However, to get respect you still have to win games. The Pac 12 hasn't historically gotten as much respect from the media either, but that has changed in recent years somewhat due to consistently good showings in the bowl season.

I would argue that the biggest determining factor in a team's so-called "strength of schedule" is media perception and the previous year's bowl games. What should it be based on? I don't know. However, I take all "strength of schedule" debates with a grain of salt.

In the end it comes down to winning the games you have to win, regardless of any other factors. I'd just caution you about using ESPN's logic, because according to them we were supposed to lose about 4 or 5 games this year that were all won by double digits.

Hopefully that doesn't come across as whiny or argumentative, but comparing strength of schedule when teams from different conferences haven't played each other much in the current season is sort of silly.

Well, except that Sagarin's numbers have no input from any sort of perception or preseason ranking, it's all interconnected. The fact is that the Pac-12 had an outstanding out of conference record this year, and the Big-10 has not. Sure it would be nice if there were more high quality OOC games between major conference members, but there's still plenty of data to go by.