2024 Schedule Difficulty - Projections per CFN

Thwg777

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How would you do that on a pragmatic level? The 2024 schedule has 9 ACC obligated games, the mutt game, Ga State and VMI. The only games that are in GT's control are Ga State, VMI, and the mutts. Are State and VMI increasing the strength of the schedule? If not, then replacing them wouldn't matter. Do you want to drop the mutt game?

Unlike basketball and baseball, there are few games that are not conference obligations. Next year, all of the non-conference opponents are already set. Until 2028 the only opponents not signed are the FCS games. 2028 is the only year in the near future that we could actually schedule something easier because only the mutts are signed OOC. 2029-2032 have the mutts and either Alabama or ND every year, so it only leave one G5 and one FCS spot.

I'm not trying to be cynical of your idea, I just don't understand what you actually mean in actual practice. Do you refuse to play the ACC schedule? In 2025, do you want to drop the mutt game and pay the buyout to Colorado so that GT can sign a full G5 and FCS OOC schedule? What if Key has the team at 10-3 in 2024 and the media actually thinks GT has a shot at the playoffs in 2025? Do we want an extremely weak OOC schedule in that situation? How would you actually take the idea of easier schedule and start taking action?

I think you’re spot on and don’t think we could have done much else in terms of 2024 scheduling teams.

My beef remains with how we’re quick to give up home games and screw over ST holders. How many other ‘P5’ teams play five home games? It reminds me of the time we were cuckholded into watching Tech play Clemson in Death Valley back to back years…
 

bobongo

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It reminds me of the time we were cuckholded into watching Tech play Clemson in Death Valley back to back years…
But some perspective: Between 1902 and 1973, 41 consecutive games against Clemson were played in Atlanta. Maybe it's the least Tech could do to give them two straight at Clemson.
 

TechPhi97

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Yeah, new concepts are. For what it is worth I will take Percentage of Production Returning and Ease of Schedule and you take Retuning Starters and Strength of Schedule and lets see who does better at betting season totals. I went 10-0 last year using those two metrics, how did you do?
How do you calculate Ease of Schedule? Specifically, how do you measure the "talent of the team". That's why this is stupid. Strength of Schedule is a flawed but measurable way to compare two teams outside of a playoff system for some sort of post season award or inclusion in a playoff, so how would you numerically measure the talent of FSU vs. Bama vs. Ohio State? Through subjective recruiting rankings of prior year's classes and individuals that have been conducted over the past 5 years, I guess. But I don't see how that's better than comparing it to actual results of teams playing teams from the current year.

To be clear, I don't think Strength of Schedule can be calculated until near the middle of the year anyway. I think Sagarin would say something similar - maybe week 8?

Perhaps you can explain how you calculate Ease of Schedule and apply it (with returning production) to make betting moves? I'm ready to be a believer, but I'm skeptical that you only bet on 10 games last year (for the entire season?) and that you went 10-0. For the record, I don't think there is any way to systematically use prior statistics to get a 1.000 batting average in college football betting.
 

Root4GT

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I think you’re spot on and don’t think we could have done much else in terms of 2024 scheduling teams.

My beef remains with how we’re quick to give up home games and screw over ST holders. How many other ‘P5’ teams play five home games? It reminds me of the time we were cuckholded into watching Tech play Clemson in Death Valley back to back years…
It's all about the dollar. Ourhome attendance is weak so we give up games for money.
 

Northeast Stinger

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Yeah, new concepts are. For what it is worth I will take Percentage of Production Returning and Ease of Schedule and you take Retuning Starters and Strength of Schedule and let’s see who does better at betting season totals. I went 10-0 last year using those two metrics, how did you do?
I don’t think predicting seasons is the point is it?

In theory a team could go undefeated against the hardest schedule in the country and that still doesn’t change the objective fact that these were the strongest opponents in the country.
 

takethepoints

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I'm not trying to be cynical of your idea, I just don't understand what you actually mean in actual practice. Do you refuse to play the ACC schedule? In 2025, do you want to drop the mutt game and pay the buyout to Colorado so that GT can sign a full G5 and FCS OOC schedule? What if Key has the team at 10-3 in 2024 and the media actually thinks GT has a shot at the playoffs in 2025? Do we want an extremely weak OOC schedule in that situation? How would you actually take the idea of easier schedule and start taking action?
Yet, remarkably, many - nay, all - other ACC schools end up with easier schedules than Tech does. Check the ratings in the original post. The closest Acc outfit is UVA at 24. True, some of this is NC schools wanting to play each other, but really now Tech's AD must have something to say about this. If I were Batt I'd be hopping mad about this and I'd keep on complaining. The ACC needs the Atlanta market and for that Tech has to succeed.

It won't help next year, of course, but going forward this has to be done. Btw, if that means moving UGA to an occasional game, so be it.
 

RonJohn

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Yet, remarkably, many - nay, all - other ACC schools end up with easier schedules than Tech does. Check the ratings in the original post. The closest Acc outfit is UVA at 24. True, some of this is NC schools wanting to play each other, but really now Tech's AD must have something to say about this. If I were Batt I'd be hopping mad about this and I'd keep on complaining. The ACC needs the Atlanta market and for that Tech has to succeed.

It won't help next year, of course, but going forward this has to be done. Btw, if that means moving UGA to an occasional game, so be it.
The big problem I have with the attitude is that schedules are made years in advance, and we don't have a clue what the strength of teams will be in even two or three years. How do we know what the strength of schedule will be in four or five years? The ACC schedule is set until 2030. The OOC non-FCS games are set thru 2027. Football schedules are very difficult to change year to year. When do you want to change the schedule to something more difficult to have a shot at the playoffs? 2026? What if Key leaves after 2025 and we have a new coach? In that case you have now put a difficult schedule on a new coach. This is something that is much easier to judge in hindsight than it is in the future.

Next year's schedule includes Colorado, Gardner-Webb, Temple, mutts, BC, Clemson, Duke, NC State, Pitt, Syracuse, VT, and Wake. Is Colorado going to be great this year, or are they going to flounder like they did last year? Will Deion even be there? The mutts will probably still be good, but it isn't guaranteed. If Kirby is fired for a scandal and half their players leave because of the scandal, do you really want that to be the year that we run away from them? Clemson has been on a downward trend the last few years. Are they going to be back this year or not? Can you answer now, which of those teams will be bowl teams this year? Can you answer now, which of those teams will be bowl teams in 2025? What changes would you make to next year's schedule? Just so you know, it is already too late to make changes to next year's schedule. (Some things could happen like changing the FCS game or some drastic circumstance, but in general it would be very difficult to make changes.)
 

TooTall

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Football schedules are very difficult to change year to year.
Honest question: I never understood this. CBB has schedule changes until about 2 months from opening tip. 2020 season proved that CFB schedules can be set for a year with about 6 months (or less) notice. What is the reason that CFB schedules are held like sacred cows and cant be touched? NFL does new scheduling each year without issue. But CFB has to preserve the 2028 scheduling between directional state u and a perennial top5 recruiting class state flagship?
 

roadkill

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Honest question: I never understood this. CBB has schedule changes until about 2 months from opening tip. 2020 season proved that CFB schedules can be set for a year with about 6 months (or less) notice. What is the reason that CFB schedules are held like sacred cows and cant be touched? NFL does new scheduling each year without issue. But CFB has to preserve the 2028 scheduling between directional state u and a perennial top5 recruiting class state flagship?
For one thing, in CFB there are only a few OOC games for a team to work with, and finding a new opponent for a game slot isn't easy among the Power 4 conferences. This doesn't mean we can't work with the mutts to change things, but that game is considered sacred by many.
The conference game schedule generally can't be chosen by a school unilaterally. Even so, when something affects the entire conference such as realignment or eliminating divisions, it presents opportunities.
 

roadkill

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The big problem I have with the attitude is that schedules are made years in advance, and we don't have a clue what the strength of teams will be in even two or three years. How do we know what the strength of schedule will be in four or five years? The ACC schedule is set until 2030. The OOC non-FCS games are set thru 2027. Football schedules are very difficult to change year to year. When do you want to change the schedule to something more difficult to have a shot at the playoffs? 2026? What if Key leaves after 2025 and we have a new coach? In that case you have now put a difficult schedule on a new coach. This is something that is much easier to judge in hindsight than it is in the future.

Next year's schedule includes Colorado, Gardner-Webb, Temple, mutts, BC, Clemson, Duke, NC State, Pitt, Syracuse, VT, and Wake. Is Colorado going to be great this year, or are they going to flounder like they did last year? Will Deion even be there? The mutts will probably still be good, but it isn't guaranteed. If Kirby is fired for a scandal and half their players leave because of the scandal, do you really want that to be the year that we run away from them? Clemson has been on a downward trend the last few years. Are they going to be back this year or not? Can you answer now, which of those teams will be bowl teams this year? Can you answer now, which of those teams will be bowl teams in 2025? What changes would you make to next year's schedule? Just so you know, it is already too late to make changes to next year's schedule. (Some things could happen like changing the FCS game or some drastic circumstance, but in general it would be very difficult to make changes.)
To your point, we don’t know what the strength of a team will be years down the road. But the likelihood of a “factory” school being a tough out is much higher than that of a non-factory. Traditionally. there has been a huge disparity in schedule difficulty between GT and our Coastal division peers such as Virginia Tech. The obvious reason is no one else had Clemson and the mutts as permanent rivals. But the ACC schedulers haven’t had a habit of doing us any favors either. In 2019, VT goes 8-4 against a schedule featuring only ND as a traditional power (a loss), and gets a Belk Bowl bid. In the ACC-only 2020 season, we went 1-2 against FSU, Clemson, and Notre Dame. VT only had to get a beatdown from Clemson.

Going to divisionless schedules eases things for us a bit while forcing teams like VT to play more factory schools rather than facing just their Coastal opponents. I think the relative schedule parity will make a difference in the ACC standings going forward. Of course, the wild card is the future of FSU and Clemson in the ACC.
 

RonJohn

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Honest question: I never understood this. CBB has schedule changes until about 2 months from opening tip. 2020 season proved that CFB schedules can be set for a year with about 6 months (or less) notice. What is the reason that CFB schedules are held like sacred cows and cant be touched? NFL does new scheduling each year without issue. But CFB has to preserve the 2028 scheduling between directional state u and a perennial top5 recruiting class state flagship?
The conference schedule can be changed quickly, but it is still a big deal. Changing the conference schedule isn't just shifting one or two games, it is changing the entire schedule for every team. The ACC went through that practice in the past year because of the changes to the conference makeup. Every change would affect other teams and schedules. If GT wanted to swap Pitt and Clemson for SMU and Stanford next year, that would mean that an opponents for SMU and Stanford would have to change. It would have to be away games for the new opponents, so other teams would have to have new opponents. Making such changes would have to take into account the home/away balance for each team impacted. It would have to take into account the desire for every ACC team to play every other ACC team within a certain time frame. It would have to take into account the announced goal of not having East Coast teams travel to the West Coast more than a certain amount. They went through this exercise of trying to come up with a rotating schedule that met all of the desired criteria, and this is what they came up with. Do they really want to go through the entire process again?

Out of conference football schedules are usually made years in advance. You sign a contract to play a home-away with a team. Then you are both obligated to fulfill that contract. The game next year at Colorado was negotiated in 2016. There are only about 70 P4 teams. Unless you only want to play G5 and FCS teams out of conference, you have to enter into agreements with some of a small group of teams. FCS, G5, P4, and mutts is the normal GT OOC schedule. That only leaves 1 spot for P4 teams in it's normal schedule. Colorado only has three OOC games and is playing GT, Wyoming, and Delaware in 2025. P4, G5, and Delaware will be a G5 team in it's transition year. Unless they want to play 11 or 12 P4 games, they used the only one they have to schedule with GT. There aren't enough teams and games available to just schedule six months before the season begins.

College basketball and college baseball are both different. Baseball can schedule home-away games with Auburn and have one in the middle of a week in April and one in the middle of a week in May. It could be on a Tuesday or Wed. They could even do a Monday game if nothing else can be worked out. College basketball can schedule random games in November and December. Weekend, mid-week, Monday after a Saturday game, Friday before a Sunday game. There is a lot of flexibility in fitting games in, in both baseball and basketball. There are also a lot more games. GT had eleven, I think, OOC games last year in basketball. GT baseball has a schedule of 25 OOC games this year. Football has a total of 12 games, only 4 OOC games, and only 2 P4 games per year. It is a lot easier to be more flexible with schedules when the quantity and the availability is a lot higher. In football, GT only has 1 FBS game to schedule each year, and other teams only have one or two to schedule. It makes it a lot more difficult, and teams usually try to contract further out in the future to ensure they have opponents available.
 

CEB

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If Kirby is fired for a scandal and half their players leave because of the scandal, do you really want that to be the year that we run away from them?
:ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
Unless crooked numbers in the loss column is a scandal, I doubt it. I am proud of you for believing that there are still good people in that athletic department though. Faith in humanity is a good thing, even if misguided.
 

SOWEGA Jacket

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It's going to look very impressive with a schedule like that when we win the ACC this year.

In Key We Trust!
Impressive to who? FSU just went undefeated and the entire nation yawned and laughed including many GT fans on this board. GT could go 10-2 and no one will give us two thoughts. Until we do it for several years no one care and even then the6 won’t because the ACC, proven by the committee, is not seen as a serious conference. I wish it weren’t that way but it is. The ACC will get 1 team in the tourney and they’ll ensure a 2nd team is ranked outside the top 12. It’s just business and the ACC is not good for the SEC/BIG business.
 

GT33

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Yeah we all love playing SC State, etc. GT needs the hardest schedule we can make, dump these BS games. We need to stop being little bitches, man up and play football. We’re already in the ACC, it doesn’t get any easier without dropping down into the Sun Belt, etc.
 

Root4GT

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Yeah we all love playing SC State, etc. GT needs the hardest schedule we can make, dump these BS games. We need to stop being little bitches, man up and play football. We’re already in the ACC, it doesn’t get any easier without dropping down into the Sun Belt, etc.
So you are admitting the SEC and B1G are better football Conferences it seems. Then they deservedly should get more teams in the CFP, right?
 

billga99

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Impressive to who? FSU just went undefeated and the entire nation yawned and laughed including many GT fans on this board. GT could go 10-2 and no one will give us two thoughts. Until we do it for several years no one care and even then the6 won’t because the ACC, proven by the committee, is not seen as a serious conference. I wish it weren’t that way but it is. The ACC will get 1 team in the tourney and they’ll ensure a 2nd team is ranked outside the top 12. It’s just business and the ACC is not good for the SEC/BIG business.
I don't think it is this cut and dry. I do think teams being equal will favor the SEC and B10. But I think you have a 2 loss team after the ACC championship and being ranking in the Top Ten would have a good chance. Yes if everyone has 3 losses or more, no shot. But when you look at the committee, I just don't see the build in bias that you do.

Chris Ault – Nevada, KC Chiefs; Patrick Chun – Wash. St.; Chet Gladchuk – went to BC, Athletic Director Navy; Jim Grobe – went to UVA, head coach WF; Warde Manuel – Michigan Director of Athletics; Randall McDaniel – went to ASU and NFL; Gary Pinkel – went to Kent St., coached at Toledo and Missou; Mack Rhoades – VP Athletics Baylor; David Sayler – Miami OH AD, Will Shields went to Nebraska and NFL; Kelly Whiteside – Graduated Rutgers currently at Columbia; Carla Williams – Dir Athletics UVA; Hunter Yurachek – AD at Univ. of Arkansas

Currently I see at most 5 being biased towards SEC and Big Ten. The others are a mix of ACC/Big 12 and other conferences. Yes you can rant about the FSU snub. But that was with a playoff of 4, not 12.
 

RonJohn

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Yes you can rant about the FSU snub. But that was with a playoff of 4, not 12.
The rub isn't that FSU would not have made it into a 12 team playoff. The rub is that an undefeated P5 champion was left out for two defeated P5 champions. If we take that same loss differential to a 12 team playoff, then it is very possible that a 3 loss team could get in over a 2 loss ACC team. It isn't about an actual criteria, it is about a narrative. That narrative has changed every year to match whatever Bill Hancock wants it to be.

With that said, every team in the ACC knows what they need to do to get into the playoffs. (well almost) Win the conference and you should be in. (Even though it is still possible under the current system for a team to win the ACC championship and not make the playoffs at all.)
 

GT33

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Undefeated ACC team with a large following got kicked to the curb. What kinda treatment do you think GT’s going to get? Nobody respects the ACC, not even ACC fans.
 

Techastrophe

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The only good ideas are the ones that bring more money to the conferences. You could schedule two TBD non-conference games to each team somewhere in weeks 8-11, one home and one away. Then after week 4 assign the matchups via auction based on the promise shown so far in the season. Each team's possible matchups are those with TBD-away the same week you're TBD-home and vice versa.
The hype for the auction process itself and the auction matchup games would be more lucrative than matchups that were decided years in advance. Meanwhile, each team's home, bye, and away weeks are established at the regular time so the facilities and fans can make plans accordingly-- only the opponent is not known until a month or two from kickoff.
 
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