Is Punishment For Badgers Soft Schedule Coming?

In college football, strength of schedule is supposed to mean something. If you play tough teams, you get rewarded in the rankings. If you fill your schedule with cupcakes, you’ll get punished. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to believe.

The Wisconsin Badgers just finished a 4-0 non-conference slate against the poorest and the littlest of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Their FBS opponents (UNLV, Oregon State, and NIU) have a combined record of 2-4 against other FBS schools and are winless in their two tries against FCS schools. Even without the massacres they sustained against Wisconsin, the three clubs have been outscored 277-248 with such lightweights as Kansas, Sacramento State, and Southern Utah (who beat UNLV 41-16 in Las Vegas) part of this beat down.

These teams are bad.

According to Sports-Reference’s Simple Rating System, NIU is the best of the bunch at #76, with UNLV and Oregon State languishing at #116 and #117 respectively, giving the Badgers the 119th toughest schedule — only Texas Tech, with games against Texas State (FCS), New Mexico and Nevada has played softer opponents by the Sports-Reference numbers. Things are slightly rosier if you buy the Football Outsiders rankings*, which have NIU up at #54, Oregon State at #55, and UNLV at #118. Football Outsiders doesn’t have strength of schedule rankings, but this grouping would likely have the Badgers somewhere in the 90s as opposed to 119.

Keep in mind, these rankings are out of 120.

So, we have clearly established the Badgers’ schedule has not just been crap, but worst-in-football level crap. And how have the Badgers been punished in the rankings?

After starting the season at #11, the Badgers have moved their way up to #7. Sure, Wisconsin dropped a spot after a victory against South Dakota this week thanks to then-#7 Oklahoma State’s defeat of then-#8 Texas A&M. But outside of that blip, the destruction of the lesser opponents and the exposure of Russell Wilson as one of the nation’s top quarterbacks has done far more good than ill for the Badgers in the eyes of the pollsters. They’ll have plenty of chances to beat on ranked opponents, with this weekend’s monumental context against Nebraska, road games at Michigan State, Illinois, and Ohio State, possibly the last home game against Penn State, and another huge game thanks to the new Big Ten Championship Game, should things come to that — if the Badgers don’t make the Big Ten Championship, the scheduling and rankings are moot anyway.

The Badgers could be killed in the computer rankings — many of the rankings will be based on similar principles as the Sports-Reference SRS except without the benefit of including margin of victory, which isn’t allowed in BCS computer rankings. The computer rankings dragged the Badgers down a bit in 2010 — the Badgers would’ve had a 0.86 instead of a 0.80 without the computer rankings, moving from fifth to fourth — and the difference between #2 Oregon and #3 TCU in the BCS rankings last season was 0.0618. If the Badgers are as disliked by the computers in 2011 as they were in 2010, it could potentially cost them a National Championship bid.

But if Oklahoma and Alabama or LSU both win out — the likeliest scenario for the Badgers missing out on the National Championship even with a perfect schedule — it isn’t likely scheduling would have made an impact anyway. Both teams would be entrenched at 1-2 in the polls. The poor teams at the bottom of the Big Ten would chip away at the Badgers’ computer ranking enough that it wouldn’t matter, say, if the Badgers played that rumored game against TCU or a similarly strong opponent.

All the Badgers can do is win the games on their schedule and hope for help from the system, and that would be the case no matter who was coming into Camp Randall this September.

*Rankings from week three, but with UNLV with no room to drop, Oregon State off week three, and NIU winning against non-major Cal Poly by 17 points, I doubt there will be much in the way of changes

Photo courtesy Garrett Craig