I’m surprised to see Clemson outside your “implosion prone” category, but you picked against them anyway, which is about right.

I was about to recommend a tweak to your strategy. I’d pick Little Sisters of the Poor teams any time they make it to a BCS bowl game, since they’re 5-1. But then I remembered that the only teams to have won those games will all be in BCS conferences by next fall anyway, so that rule probably won’t work anymore.

Thanks for the comment.

True – I have not taken into consideration pre-season rankings. The reason is because most schedules are set years in advance. I wanted to see which schools set up games against other top conferences. Totally agree that I have not looked at intra-conference strength of schedule, only inter-conference.

I’ve included Notre Dame and Boise State because I consider them perennial contenders, and it takes guts for schools to schedule them. While they’re not a BCS AQ, scheduling them is comparable to scheduling a BCS AQ team.

LOL about Ohio State – Ohio State is a perennial contender – 11 BCS bowls in the last 15 years (including Pre-Tressel years). You’re not going to have to worry about a weak opponent. :)

How’s the Northwestern Football team looking this year? The game vs. BC should be interesting.

The year VT did actually get to the national championship game, they opened their schedule with JMU and then followed that with UAB. I can’t fault them for trying that again. (Not that I think they’ll get there this year. They won’t.)

What kills me the most, though, is that VT is probably going to get hammered for having a terrible strength of schedule in 2014 and 2015 because their hardest out of conference game will be Ohio State, which may still be recovering from sanctions at that point. I definitely wanted Tressel to stay until then.