Even in the ever-changing world of college football we live in, where teams are changing conferences and players are jumping from team to team like never before, one constant will always remain: fans complaining their team’s path to the finish line is harder than anyone else’s.
We constantly saw that over the years in the Pac-12. With the Oregon Ducks entering a new conference, we will undoubtedly see similar complaints going forward.
But are the complaints warranted?
It’s somewhat tough to tell with the new-look Big Ten now featuring an influx of competitive teams from the West Coast. Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA are joining Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State at the top. Beyond matchups with those teams, though, does anything really stand out as daunting?
I wanted to find out once and for all. With the help of ESPN’s SP+ ratings that came out this week, courtesy of Bill Connelly, we grouped every team in the nation, gave them a grade and figured out whose schedule is the toughest on paper. Here’s a breakdown of how we assigned grades to each individual team using a tier system:
- ESPN’s SP+ ranks every Football Bowl Subdivision team from 1-134. We broke those 134 teams into 20 tiers, giving the best teams in the nation a score of 10, all the way down to the worst teams in the nation getting a score of 0.
- After going through each Big Ten team’s schedule, we added up their total opponent score and determined who has the highest opponent grade for the year.
- Note: Football Championship Subdivision opponents, such as Idaho and South Dakota were given a score of 0, along with the bottom-tier FBS schools.
For reference, here’s how the Big Ten teams graded out:
| Grades 0-3 | Indiana (3), Purdue (3), Michigan State (3.5), |
| Grades 4-7 | Illinois (5), Northwestern (5.5), Maryland (6.5), Rutgers (6.5), Minnesota (7), Nebraska (7), UCLA (7) |
| Grades 8-10 | Iowa (8), Washington (8), Wisconsin (8), USC (8.5), Penn State (9.5), Michigan (10), Oregon (10), Ohio State (10) |
Don’t worry, it’s not as confusing as it might seem at first. Here’s a look at which teams have the toughest schedules on paper going into the 2024 season, and who has the easiest path to the expanded College Football Playoff.