Strength of Schedule.

The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing. But more important than all of that, the Oklahoma Sooners spring football game is in 24 hours!

For the first time since December, Gaylord Family Memorial Stadium will have a sea of crimson-and- cream-clad fans pouring in through its gates. Not to mention a star-studded side line of such OU greats as Trent Williams and Adrian Peterson, will be there to honor the winningest coach in college football: the legendary Bob Stoops. It is time for spring football, which means battles for positions will soon be decided and college football season is right around the corner, but today’s posting is not about the spring football game of the Sooners.

Today’s blog is inspired by an article that I read in the Daily Oklahoman. The article concerned the Sooners’ non-conference schedule for 2020. For those of you who are unsure of how scheduling works in college football, allow me to provide you with a simplified version.

If you are a team like the Sooners, or the Alabama Crimson Tide or Ohio State, that means you play in a conference consisting of perhaps 10-13 other teams. Most of your schedule is comprised with playing the other teams in your conference.

For example: Oklahoma is a member of the Big XII conference, so most of their schedule will be pitting them against their conference foes such as Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas State and others. These games are in the schedule by default, and the only thing that varies about them is the dates, times and locations (your place or mine) or a neutral site, such as the OU Texas Red River Shoot out in the Cotton Bowl.

The exceptions to this set up, would be those schools that are independents and do not belong to a specific conference. The most notable of these schools being Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish. Notre Dame usually has one of the toughest schedules in college football and have no problem filling their schedule with opponents where most of them are tougher then a two dollar steak. Annual staples for Notre Dame include: USC, Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford. Since everyone wants a feather in their cap by beating Notre Dame, they have no problem filling their schedule, however the other independents do.

When the crowds have gone home and the dust has settled on your season, the powers that be, the CFP (College Football Playoff Committee) will examine your schedule as a whole and how you performed. One of the main factors that the CFP considers is known as “strength of schedule”, which simply means, how tough the teams were that you played against and how badly did you win or lose to them.

Obviously, it can’t be held against a team like OU that they have to play Kansas every year and that is not exactly what you would call a tough game for the Sooners. And you KU fans need to cut me some slack, for I don’t think I am letting some big cat out of the bag by saying so.

When putting the teams schedule under the microscope, what’s called your non-conference schedule will be closely examined from absolutely every angle possible. This means which teams outside of your conference did you schedule to play 2 or 3 games against. I think it goes without saying, that if you schedule a non-conference game with North Western School for the Blind that might count against you when the CFP is looking at your non-conference schedule, however, there is a trick to it. You don’t want to schedule what are known as “cupcake games” where the Alabama Crimson Tide plays the local peewee football team, but you don’t want such a tough schedule that you get beat on all your non-conference games and your season is over 3 games in and that is where the balancing act comes in.

The old stand-by statement made by all coaches and athletic directors is that non-conference games are scheduled years in advance and can’t be changed - or the school shouldn’t be questioned for scheduling teams. That is, for the most part true, however, it is not completely true. Major intersectional home and home series, like OU verses Ohio State, OU verses Florida State, OU verses Notre Dame, etc., are set several years in advance.

Example: when OU scheduled a home and home with Tennessee, a few years ago, they were an SEC power house. By the time the series came around, Tennessee was a mere shadow of what they once were. NOT OU’s fault. When OU scheduled the fairly recent home and home series with Notre Dame, Notre Dame had basically fallen off the map. Bad luck for OU that when Notre Dame came to Norman 3 or 4 years ago, it was the year they went to the BCS title game.

The Sooners typically try to schedule their three non-conference games with one tough team (like the home and home series between them and Ohio State in 2016-2017), a moderate team and then a cupcake game. But the Sooners standards for even their cupcake game are fairly high, so you can imagine my surprise - and very mixed feelings - when I read that OU had rounded out their non-conference schedule for 2020 with a visit from the Missouri State Bears.

*Scratches head*

I’m very much aware that I am currently residing in Missouri right now (and that the MSU campus is a mere 2.5 south from where I currently sit) with my keyboard spitting slanderous words about the Bears’ football team - but please understand, all you current MSU students, alums and just die-hard fans, I am not slamming the school. I am quite certain that it is a top notch center of academic achievement and excellence, but with a stadium capacity of 17,500 and a 2017 record of 3-8, I don’t think anyone would argue that a football school it is not. Those three wins were against Murray State, Indiana State and Southern Illinois. Their most impressive loss (if you can call it that) was against their in-state FBS rivals, the Missouri Tigers, in a game that - if you were just looking at the score - looked like a basketball game with a final score of 43-72.

All that being said, it begs the question, why a powerhouse football school - a veritable blue blood - such as OU would want to put a black mark on their strength of schedule for 2020 by playing the Bears? I do not have an answer to this question, but perhaps I can hazard a guess.

Let’s say OU already had a school scheduled for that non-conference slot, maybe a UTEP or an SMU and for some inexplicable reason, they canceled. Now OU is scrambling around, digging through the barrel, trying to fill their last non-conference slot with any school who is available. The other two slots filled by the Army Black Knights and Tennessee Volunteers. Enter the Missouri State Bears. By inviting the Bears to Norman, the Sooners sew up their non-conference schedule and almost guarantee themselves an easy win - even if it will do nothing for their strength of schedule once the CFP holds a magnifying glass to it (and you can bet they will).

So, your next question might be, what’s in it for the Bears? Why would they want to travel 300 miles just to be taken behind the wood shed for three hours?

How does 600,000 sound to you?

That’s right, the price tag for OU to host MSU is $600,000 to the visiting team. So, the Bears make the trip for what will almost certainly be the worst beating of their season, but in return, they are handsomely payed for the efforts and will take home more money than they probably make out of their home schedule in half a season and - I can promise you - there will be no home and home series between the Sooners and the Bears.

Anytime you see a cupcake team roll into a power five stadium it is a paycheck game simple as that. That team is being paid a bundle to take a beating and round out a schedule. Allow me to be blunt (and hopefully I will not be crucified for being so) but here we go:

It is humiliating that they’re playing MSU and probably just as humiliating for MSU to almost certainly travel all that way just for a beating, but OU probably had no choice. As bad as that is, they’ll have to add insult to injury by paying MSU $600,000. OU has everything to lose and nothing to gain by playing MSU. The fact that they will be playing them at all, will be a large black mark on their non-conference schedule.

If they win the game (which they almost certainly will) nothing happens. It will not be like when OU rolled into the horse shoe (after a terrible whippin’ by Ohio State in 2016) and planted a flag both figuratively and literally in the middle of Ohio State’s turf. It will be a cupcake win that will do OU no good in the eyes of the CFP. But if they were to lose, it would be dark days in Norman.

OU’s season would end there, as would any playoff hopes. So, we will have to wait until 2020 to see just what unfolds as a result from their schedule. I will bet a drink with everyone in my office that OU wins, but even if they do, I’m not sure any Crimson and Cream will feel any satisfaction at the win, and if they lose, OU’s season will be lost, and the next round is on me.