Scheduling big-time nonconference college football games approaches extinction
June 8, 2009 9:16 PM
Big-time intersectional games have gone the way of the wishbone.
I asked ESPN's estimable Stats & Information group to run some numbers for this story. I wanted to compare the number of nonconference games between ranked teams from 1978, '88, '98 and 2008 -- to confirm or refute the theory that there's been a drop-off in ambitious scheduling.
The results: There were 11 games matching Top 20* teams in 1978, 15 in '88, eight in '98 and just four in '08. In other words: over the past two decades, the number of Top 20 nonconference matchups has decreased by half every 10 years. And the Top 10 matchups have virtually disappeared, going from five in '78 to seven in '88 to two in '98 and one in '08.
(* We used the Top 20 instead of Top 25 for consistency. That was the size of the poll back in 1978 and '88.)
espn.com
I asked ESPN's estimable Stats & Information group to run some numbers for this story. I wanted to compare the number of nonconference games between ranked teams from 1978, '88, '98 and 2008 -- to confirm or refute the theory that there's been a drop-off in ambitious scheduling.
The results: There were 11 games matching Top 20* teams in 1978, 15 in '88, eight in '98 and just four in '08. In other words: over the past two decades, the number of Top 20 nonconference matchups has decreased by half every 10 years. And the Top 10 matchups have virtually disappeared, going from five in '78 to seven in '88 to two in '98 and one in '08.
(* We used the Top 20 instead of Top 25 for consistency. That was the size of the poll back in 1978 and '88.)
espn.com
Filed under: College Football
