Who Did They Even Play?

How hard is Notre Dame’s schedule — and can anybody know yet? On Friday, Kirk Herbstreit called it “an embarrassment,” with two real tests: BYU and Miami. By Sunday’s AP poll it has three: No. 1 Miami, No. 2 BYU and No. 23 SMU. BYU beat the Irish 28–24 on Saturday. That is as many as Indiana, last year’s champion, and one fewer than Georgia. Ohio State has five; Texas has six.

Now watch the schedule move without a single game changing. A week ago those same three teams were No. 8, No. 3 and No. 24. One Saturday later, two of them are the top two teams in the country. Notre Dame did not add anybody. The belief about who they play just went up.

Most people assume a schedule’s strength is a fact, fixed the day it is printed. The polls say otherwise.

So he is half right. Notre Dame’s first six opponents were unranked in August and are unranked now. But here is the part you will not hear on television: nobody knows how hard any schedule is in October. You find out in January.

By the end of this you will be able to answer any schedule argument with one question — as of when? — and you will see why that question settles more than the shouting does.

A Schedule Is a Belief

Every August, 25 teams are ranked. Over the last twelve seasons, about 11 of them were gone from the final poll. Never fewer than 8; in 2022, 15.

That means a schedule judged in August is judged on rankings that are close to half wrong. Watch what that does to the champions. We took every College Football Playoff winner since 2014 and counted its ranked regular-season opponents twice: once by the August poll, once by the final one.

The totals barely move: 44 ranked opponents by August’s poll, 42 by the final one. But only 28 are the same teams. Sixteen August “tests” turned out not to be, and fourteen teams nobody ranked became one. Georgia in 2022 played five ranked teams by the end; four of them were unranked when the season began.

Why College Football Argues and the NFL Does Not

The NFL works more like an experiment. Thirty-two teams, a schedule built to balance them, and a playoff where everyone who matters plays each other. You settle it on the field.

College football works more like an observational study. There are more than 130 teams, twelve games each, and most conferences barely touch. You almost never see the two teams you want to compare on the same field; you compare them by proxy, through the teams they both played. That gives you breadth and very little precision — so what fills the gap is belief.

That is not a flaw to be ashamed of. It is just the situation Bayesian thinkingi was built for. The August poll is the prior. Every Saturday is evidence. The schedule’s strength is a belief that updates; you should expect it to move, and you should hold it loosely until it stops.

What to take home

When someone calls a schedule soft or brutal, ask as of when? In August it is a guess that will be close to half wrong. In October it is a better guess. In January it is a fact.

Here is the honest verdict on Notre Dame today. The front half was light. The back half has three ranked teams, and any of them can still fall out. We will count again when it is over, and so should Herbstreit.

Updated October 19: the first version of this issue used the October 11 poll and went out before we added Saturday’s result. It called Georgia No. 1; Georgia lost to Auburn and is now No. 5. The numbers above use Sunday’s poll.