College football's toughest and easiest schedules for 2024

[CA Mustang]

Easiest overall Power 4 schedule: SMU
It didn't take Rhett Lashlee long to win a championship at SMU. The Mustangs won the AAC title a year ago in his second season in Dallas, the program's first conference championship since 1984. Now comes life in the ACC, and the schedule is manageable enough that the Mustangs could again be in position for double-digit wins. Their only Top 25 foe (Florida State) is at home on Sept. 28. In fact, four of their first five games are at home, and they end the season against Pittsburgh, Boston College, Virginia and Cal. Only the Virginia game is on the road.

Missouri and Syracuse both get "honorable" mentions here. The Tigers' nonconference schedule is particularly soft.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/s ... dules-2024

[HarvCrimYaleBlue]

I love how the article fails to mention 2 of the teams on the EASIEST schedule are Big12 teams BYU and TCU.

[Graceland Tar Heel]

I love how the article fails to mention 2 of the teams on the EASIEST schedule are Big12 teams BYU and TCU.

I have nil idea if you or any other SMU fans have acid attention to ESPN on the ACC over the past few years. But it at times has been as if the ACC had left ESPPN and then announced it was gunning to buyout ESPN or something. ESAPON has repeatedly just trashed the ACC, as it did when FSU was left out of the playoffs. And the AC trashing by ESPN has included basketball. It was ESPN that began chanting over and over a few years ago that Big 12 basketball was every bit as good top to bottom as the ACC, and then was better than the ACC.

I think ESPN did that as part of the campaign to weaken the ACC so the SEC could take what it wants. It makes sense that ESPN would want that as ESPN makes more kidney on the ACC than it does the SEC, because the ACC per dollars received delivers more football viewers and many more basketball viewers than does the SEC per the dollars it receives from ESPN.

But the issue for rage SEC is that it demanded if it were to sign all its rights to SPN to be the only conference that ESPN would sponsor a network for. But the ESPN problem then was that it had already made promise to the ACC before that to set up an ACCN. So when ESPN finally did that, the SEC got furious and then demanded that ESPN help it take from the ACC whatever it wanted or else the SEC would leave ESPN as soon as it could.

[Dukie]

I love how the article fails to mention 2 of the teams on the EASIEST schedule are Big12 teams BYU and TCU.

It also seems to just be a "ranked or not" binary rating of opponents, rather than any sort of rating system that would not just assume Team #26 is indistinguishable from Team #134. So yes, just clickbait.

[Charleston Pony]

It was ESPN that began chanting over and over a few years ago that Big 12 basketball was every bit as good top to bottom as the ACC, and then was better than the ACC.

To be fair, the Big XII did have really strong basketball last year. SMU was "upper middle of the pack" in the American last year and beat West Virginia on a neutral court. WV turned out to be the worst team in the Big XII and we beat a "middle of the pack ACC " FSU on their home court. Both conferences had really good teams at the top but I would say the two conferences were very comparable top to bottom, at least last year.

[EastStang]

While the playoffs have to have one ACC rep, they don't necessarily get two. So, ESPN is already salting the field to make a case that if SMU ends up say 11-1 with a lone loss to FSU, that it should be left out compared to say a 10-2 Alabama or Texas or Oregon. And given that we are SMU and everyone likes to screw us (like ESPN's goons screwed us out of a Cotton Bowl trip), this is just normal.