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Measuring 2016 Strengths of Schedules

Bowls are over, national signing day is over, so face it, you're left in MAC football desert. That's not a fun feeling, but fear not, I have some data for us all to ponder over for at least the next hour.

I've taken the liberty in putting together a ranking of each MAC team's strength of schedule for the upcoming season. Note that this is just of the four out-of-conference games currently set.

I should note that this is vastly unofficial, and I expect more than one person to look for a bias, but let me explain the criteria used.

In measuring FBS schools, I used the most recent S+P rankings of all the FBS opponents scheduled. Typically I take an average of several sources, but no one has time to do all that math. So I picked the source that I felt is the most comprehensive.

In measuring FCS opponents, I had no real way to measure them objectively against their FBS counterparts. Sure, some FCS schools are better than some FBS schools, but there is no real cross-reference to back that statement up. It didn't seem fair to ignore all the FCS opponents so I had to develop a system. That system took the current rankings, which I pulled from this legitimate looking site, and then added 128 to each ranking. The 128 number comes from the total number of FBS teams, and I'm taking the assumption that even the best FCS school is ranked behind the worst FBS school. I certainly don't believe that at heart, but I need level data to use.

So I present to you the rankings, the lower the score the tougher the schedule.

MAC Team Opponent 1 Opponent 2 Opponent 3 Opponent 4 Total
Miami 47 148 11 74 280
Bowling Green 3 156 82 55 296
Western Mich. 56 179 61 39 335
N. Illinois 114 50 45 139 348
Akron 217 31 64 43 355
Kent State 30 155 187 1 373
Ball State 91 60 172 93 416
Toledo 79 210 100 38 427
Central Mich. 225 33 106 73 437
Ohio 112 127 22 208 469
Buffalo 214 99 123 67 503
Eastern Mich. 251 85 124 114 574

I'm sure you want to cross reference the schedules, so here we are:

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5
Akron VMI Wisconsin Marshall Appalachin St.
Ball State Georgia St. Indiana East. Kentucky Florida Atl.
Bowling Green Ohio State North Dakota Middle Tenn. Memphis
Buffalo Albany Nevada Army Boston Col.
Central Michigan Presbyterian Oklahoma St. UNLV Virginia
Eastern Michigan Miss. Valley St. Mizzou Charlotte Wyoming
Kent State Penn State N. Carolina A&T Monmouth Alabama
Miami Iowa Eastern Ill. W. Kentucky Cincinnati
Northern Illinois Wyoming USF San Diego St. Western Illinois
Ohio Texas State Kansas Tennessee Gardner-Webb
Toledo Arkansas St. Maine Fresno State BYU
Western Michigan N'western NC Central Illinois GA Southern

Note that teams in BOLD are power-5 schools, teams in Italics are FCS schools, and the rest are group of 5 schools.

Did I miss something? Is someone's schedule incorrect? Did I use poor data? Let me know below

This post was submitted by one of our esteemed readers and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or thoughts of Hustle Belt or SB Nation.