The Myth of the Marquee Matchup

When the College Football Playoff was created, many folks claimed that it would lead to better in-season matchups between top teams, because teams would be willing to take the risk to increase their strength of schedule.  However, as we have gone through multiple seasons, the committee has made it clear that the top criteria they look at is number of losses.  I thought I would take a look at the teams that made the CFP or just missed it, and see if a slight change of schedule would have affected their ability to be selected.

Case Study: Power 5 Schedules

With discussions of conference vs. conference and winning percentages, I wanted to take a look at how different teams and different conferences create their schedules.  For example, Alabama has a good record against other Power 5 teams over the last few years, but a closer look at their schedule shows that they haven't played a Power 5 team out-of-conference outside of a neutral site game in at least 6 years.

Sit back, this is a long one with a lot of numbers.