As college football scheduling stays a consistent, hot topic, we take a look at some of the scheduling trends worth keeping an eye on…

Neutral Site Games

Kickoff games and other neutral site games have increased in frequency in recent years, and the trend isn’t slowing down. Whether it is the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff in Atlanta or the Cowboy Classic in Arlington, SEC teams are very engaged in these neutral site, non-conference matchups.

Orlando may be getting in the mix with the latest round of upgrades to the Citrus Bowl. Ole Miss and Florida State will meet in Orlando to kickoff the 2016 season. Future Orlando kickoff games could be announced soon.

The combination of receiving a nice payday, getting national exposure and boosting the strength of schedule makes these neutral site games attractive for Athletic Directors looking to fill out future football schedules.

Home-and-Home Non-Conference Series

With the rise of neutral site games, the home-and-home agreements with out-of-conference opponents might be becoming a lower priority. Rather than committing to a pair of games with a future opponent, schools seem to be preferring the one-time, neutral site kickoff games instead. Auburn AD Jay Jacobs recently commented:

“The challenge is four years from now, who is going to be good?” he said. “You can schedule them today and in four years they may not have the strength of schedule or RPI you’d like, but that’s what we’re going to do. That’s the situation we’re in but we’re talking to anyone who would talk to us.”

If you don’t know who is going to be good in the future, committing to two games is more risky than committing to a single game.

SEC schools of course can fill up a home schedule very easily by paying “cupcake” schools to come visit, so it appears that schools view it as an advantage to schedule the non-conference teams at a neutral site with possibly more national attention and a bigger payday. This also reduces the number of true road games for a school.

This doesn’t mean future home-and-home series are disappearing. Georgia recently scheduled a series with UCLA for 2025 and 2026, and Auburn is slated to play Clemson in 2016 and 2017 and Cal in 2020 and 2021.

As a fan, I think home-and-home series with new out-of-conference opponents are fantastic and hope they increase in frequency. One of the most enjoyable experiences in college football is to visit a new college campus, see a new stadium, meet the fans, etc. Jerry’s World is great, but the experience is more corporate than college football tradition.

Selection Committee Driving Strength of Schedule Focus

Strength of schedule has always been a much discussed topic, but the selection committee and the new college football playoff format has increased the urgency in which schools are working to improve the strength of their respective schedules.

While the BCS crushed teams for a single loss, the selection committee has devalued the single loss. Rather than a focus on being perfect regardless of the strength of the schedule, the selection committee is encouraging better scheduling by telling schools that they’d rather teams play good teams and lose a game than run the table against a bunch of cupcakes. The best example of this occurring in the 2014 inaugural playoff season was when Alabama knocked off No. 1 ranked Mississippi State. The following week, the selection committee jumped Alabama to No. 1 from No. 5 and only dropped Mississippi State from No. 1 to No. 4 (still ahead of TCU).

The Big 12 experienced the negatives of this change when Baylor and TCU were left out of the four-team college football playoff field. With weak schedules and no conference championship game, the Big 12 was on the outside looking in last season.

Overall, this is a win for fans. We can expect schools to continue to schedule more and more interesting games with other power conference opponents for future seasons.

Cupcake scheduling strategy

We rarely hear anybody talk about this last point, but it’s something that I find quite interesting. All power conference teams schedule “cupcake” games where they essentially just pay a bottom feeder school to travel to their stadium and get pummeled (at least that’s supposed to be how it works), but not all conferences schedule these games at the same time each season.

The Big Ten, for instance, fills the first month of the schedule with these cupcake games. Contrast that with the SEC which has cupcake games in September, but also spreads them out more. We’re all familiar with the week before rivalry week in which essentially every SEC school plays a cupcake game.

During the upcoming 2015 season, this dreaded week of SEC football falls on November 21. If you look at that week’s schedule, it’s actually not as bad as previous years, but it’s still a relatively weak slate of football for the conference. Because the week falls so late in the season at a time when postseason debate is in full force, and because people look for ways to criticize the SEC, the conference typically takes some heat by members of the media each year during this week of games.

What’s better for fans? What’s better for getting a team into the playoff? First and foremost, reducing the number of cupcakes on the schedule is better for everyone, but while they’re on the schedule, there’s not a clear answer for when they should be scheduled.

I’d argue that it’s better for fans to spread them out a bit. If your team doesn’t play a real game until week 5, what fun is that? The start of the season is basically delayed an entire month. That’s terrible. However, having a full week of cupcakes in late November is always going to bring criticism in the media, and might be a negative factor that could hurt a “bubble” SEC team in a future playoff selection situation.

Overall, we’d like to see fewer cupcakes overall. Spread out the remaining ones while not concentrating them too much in late November.