Pat Dooley’s Friday Fivesome June 25

The Friday Fivesome comes at you with a look at scheduling today with the best part of it being that the new playoff plan should make the future look a lot better.

1. I started thinking about this because Pro Football Focus ranked the top 10 toughest schedules in college for 2021. It’s important to note that the reason schedules are seen as difficult vs. easy is mostly because of the teams that end up on the schedule from the other divisions. This isn’t an issue in the Big 12 where everyone plays everyone else. That’s also why no teams from the Big 12 were not included in this ranking because everyone gets some soft games against the teams that are perceived in the preseason as not being any good. Anyway, it was a little bit of a surprise to see that Florida was not in the top 10 despite playing Auburn and LSU from the other side. And yet, South Carolina is No. 5, mainly because nobody in the SEC has a tougher non-conference game than SC’s annual dust-up with Clemson. The Gamecocks also have Texas A&M and Auburn from the West.

2. That’s the deal. The West is considered the gauntlet because of Alabama and Texas A&M and LSU. The East has Georgia and a Florida team that has a lot of questions and nobody else perceived as a power. Like everything this time of the year, it’s just an opinion. There are so-called experts who think Kentucky might be really good this year and that Missouri is going to surprise some people. Still, the East is considered the weaker division so just by being in the East your strength of schedule goes down.

3. Oh, I buried the lead. Arkansas was rated as the nation’s most difficult schedule. You know why? Arky doesn’t get to play Arky. But the Razorbacks do get to play every other team in the West plus Georgia and Missouri. And they play Texas. They also play Rice, Georgia Southern and Arkansas Pine Bluff. This year’s schedule is a breeze compared to last year. In that PFF ranking, five of the top 10 teams were from the SEC. And that’s because (altogether now), SEC teams have to play SEC teams.

4. Schedules are going to be more difficult down the road as the new playoff approaches and athletic directors were smart to go ahead and schedule Power 5 teams instead of eclairs in the future. But this year, all but one team is playing only one non-con from the Power 5. That team is Georgia, which annually plays Georgia Tech and couldn’t turn down the money to play a neutral site game against Clemson to open the season. Elsewhere, everyone has one big one and three little ones and those are the kinds of schedules that have contributed to the decline in attendance over the years. It’s not enough that the local favorites are playing a game. Who are they playing? Nick Saban can complain all he wants about fans leaving the stadium early, but I wouldn’t watch his team demolish Mercer if they were playing in my backyard. Like I said earlier, it will all change soon and for the better.

5. By the way, the No. 10 toughest schedule according to Pro Football Focus belonged to FSU. The Semis have to play Notre Dame to open the season and Florida to close it. FSU is supposed to be better this season and road games at Clemson and North Carolina plus a home game against Miami do make for a difficult schedule when you add in Notre Dame and at Florida. In the end, however, we aren’t sure who has the most difficult schedules. Teams we think will be good might flop and other teams surprise us with how good they are. But this is what talking season is all about.