The Cupcake Wall of Shame

[Wannabe MEP]

The goal of this thread is to evaluate scheduling decisions of Power 5 teams. In particular, I want to highlight the following two groups of teams:

1. Teams that choose to schedule extra cupcakes/fewer legit opponents
2. Teams that choose to schedule fewer cupcakes/extra legit opponents

The goal is to emphasize the NUMBER of cupcakes a team schedules. The goal is NOT to evaluate overall strength of schedule — that's too complicated, and other tools like FPI and Sagarin already do that better than I could. Also, the question is whether the school signed up for a challenge/cupcake . . . regardless of whether a challenge/cupcake actually materialized that year. So when you sign up to play Western Michigan, you're probably looking for a cupcake (even though every once in a while Western Michigan might be pretty good).

Additional details/notes/caveats:

• I'm counting Power 5 opponents as *legit*. Obviously, some Power 5 teams are more *legit* than others, but I decided trying to figure out a line of separation for this would be too messy, partly because it's not merely a question of how good the team is that given year, but how good you expect that team to be. All Power 5 teams have the branding and resources to field a *decent* team. Colorado was pretty terrible for a few years in a row, but I remember when they won a national championship, and last year they won the Pac-12 South. Indiana is pretty much always bad, but even average Indiana is tougher than the average cupcake. So while I definitely think that there's a big difference between scheduling Alabama and scheduling Vanderbilt, I'm gonna leave that to a different discussion.
• Teams outside the Power 5 default to "cupcake" unless they are *regularly pretty good*. To make this objective, I'm defining *regularly pretty good* as: finish at least 5 of the last 10 years with a top 50 FPI. So that includes: BSU, Notre Dame, BYU, USF, and Houston. There may be others, but I haven't found any yet.

So the median expectation is: 10 legit opponents and 2 cupcakes. E.g., 9 conference opponents + 1 legit out-of-conference opponent, or 8 conference opponents + 2 legit out-of-conference opponents.

• For the Cupcake Wall of Shame: 3 cupcakes (or more?)
• For the Badass Wall of Fame: 1 cupcake (or less?)

I'm gonna work on building these lists. Here are a few initial finds:

2017 Cupcake Wall of Shame

• Alabama — 3 cupcakes
  • Fresno State
  • Colorado State
  • Mercer
• Tennessee — 3 cupcakes
  • Indiana State
  • UMass
  • Southern Mississippi
• Wake Forest — 3 cupcakes
  • Presbyterian
  • Utah State
  • Appalachian St
• Colorado — 3 cupcakes
  • Colorado St
  • Texas State
  • N Colorado
• Kansas — 3 cupcakes
  • SE Missouri St
  • Central Michigan
  • Ohio

2017 Badass Wall of Fame

• USC — 9 conference games + Texas & Notre Dame (1 cupcake)
• Cal — 9 conference games + North Carolina & Ole Miss (1 cupcake)
• Texas — 9 conference games + Maryland & USC (1 cupcake)
• Purdue — 9 conference games + Louisville & Missouri (1 cupcake)

Help me find others, critique, and/or discuss...

[Bulltalk]

Hate to admit it, but my UW Huskies...

--Rutgers
--Montana
--Fresno State

These things are oftentimes scheduled years in advance. For instance, the out-of-conference for the Huskies under Chris Petersen will start markedly improving, or getting more difficult starting next year with teams like Auburn, BYU, Michigan, Ohio State lined up in the coming years.

[Wannabe MEP]

so...realized almost the entire SEC is in the Cupcake Wall of Shame

2017 Cupcake Wall of Shame — SEC Version

• Alabama
• Miss St
• Auburn
• Texas A&M
• Tennessee
• Arkansas
• Vanderbilt
• Kentucky
• Ole Miss
• Missouri

^ all have at least 3 cupcakes

Honorable Mention: LSU => not technically 3 cupcakes by my rules from the original post, but oh-so-close, with Chattanooga, Troy, Syracuse (one of the worst Power 5s), and BYU (on the exception list).

2017 Badass Wall of Fame — SEC Version

Ummm...nobody. Zero representatives.

Honorable Mention: Florida => 2 cupcakes, but signed up for Michigan and FSU, so respect to the Gators.

[Wannabe MEP]

Hate to admit it, but my UW Huskies...

--Rutgers
--Montana
--Fresno State

These things are oftentimes scheduled years in advance. For instance, the out-of-conference for the Huskies under Chris Petersen will start markedly improving, or getting more difficult starting next year with teams like Auburn, BYU, Michigan, Ohio State lined up in the coming years.

Right, so not technically according to my *rules*: Rutgers is Power 5, and while they've been trash for the last couple years, they historically haven't been so terrible. They aren't as low (by the ten-year analysis) as Indiana, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Purdue, etc., but depends where you draw the line. Because this was so messy, I decided not to draw that line at all. And yeah, schedule was made years ago, when Rutgers and Washington were both middle-of-the-pack. It wasn't predictable that UW would rise to the top, and Rutgers would fall to the bottom.

So like LSU, Washington gets *Honorable Mention* in the Cupcake Wall of Shame

[Bulltalk]

Hate to admit it, but my UW Huskies...

--Rutgers
--Montana
--Fresno State

These things are oftentimes scheduled years in advance. For instance, the out-of-conference for the Huskies under Chris Petersen will start markedly improving, or getting more difficult starting next year with teams like Auburn, BYU, Michigan, Ohio State lined up in the coming years.

Right, so not technically according to my *rules*: Rutgers is Power 5, and while they've been trash for the last couple years, they historically haven't been so terrible. They aren't as low (by the ten-year analysis) as Indiana, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Purdue, etc., but depends where you draw the line. Because this was so messy, I decided not to draw that line at all. And yeah, schedule was made years ago, when Rutgers and Washington were both middle-of-the-pack. It wasn't predictable that UW would rise to the top, and Rutgers would fall to the bottom.

So like LSU, Washington gets *Honorable Mention* in the Cupcake Wall of Shame

Thanks for the reprieve.

[bleu]

Mizzou's schedule is offensive.

Idaho, Missouri State, Connecticut, and Purdue. Looking at FPI that's #118, #117, # 66, and an FBS team.

"Oh, but they play in the SEC"

Yeah, the SEC East. And they avoid playing Alabama, LSU, and A&M this season.

[Bulltalk]

SEC is overrated this year.

[Wannabe MEP]

Credit to USC despite the loss: they've played perhaps the toughest schedule in the country to date. They've already played 4 power-5 teams, 3 of which are ranked top 30 according to Sagarin & top 25 according to FPI.

[CubsFanInAR]

The problem is that the stadium size and the almighty dollar preclude scheduling more than one non-cupcake per year. If your stadium holds a decent number of fans, you REALLY don't want to give up the home games necessary to get non-cupcakes. At 100k seats and $50 per ticket (not including concessions, parking, suites, merchandising, etc.), a school is giving up $5 Million in revenue for every home game they surrender. A more realistic number is $70 per ticket and $30 in other spending per person for $10M in revenue per game. They can pay a cupcake $1-1.5M (and net a minimum of $3.5-4M and a more realistic $8.5-9M) every year or they can schedule a home and home with a major team and forfeit the $5M (realistically significantly more) every other year. From a financial standpoint, it is a no-brainer.

Look at the non-conference schedules of the teams with the largest stadiums:
Michigan - Florida, Cincinnati, Air Force
Penn State - Akron, Pitt, Georgia State
Ohio State - Oklahoma, Army, UNLV
Texas A&M - UCLA, Nicholls, Louisiana, New Mexico
Tennessee - Georgia Tech, Indiana State, U Mass, Southern Miss
LSU - BYU, Chattanooga, Syracuse, Troy
Alabama - FSU, Fresno State, Colorado State, Mercer
Texas - Maryland, San Jose State, USC

That's all the stadiums of 100,000 or more. Note that only Texas scheduled 2 Power 5 teams for their non-conference. It's too costly for those schools to do anything else.

The Big Ten has 5 stadiums with 80,000 seats or more and the SEC has 8 stadiums with 80,000 seats or more. All of those schools are loathe to schedule home and home series with Power 5 opponents because of the massive loss of revenue involved. Not only that, but every non-cupcake you schedule is one more tough win to get bowl eligible (and even a lower tier bowl means more free advertising, better recruiting, weeks of additional bowl practices, and yes, more revenue for yourself and your conference)

By the way, Florida ought to be on the semi-tough guy list since they scheduled Michigan and Florida State this year (and schedule FSU every year). Arkansas probably ought to be on there as well, because they originally had Texas A&M on the schedule every year through 2018 before A&M joined the SEC and had also scheduled some home and homes against Texas, TCU, and even Michigan.

[Wannabe MEP]

Alabama has played 5 games against teams in the FPI top 50.

After next week, USC will have played 9 games against teams in the FPI top 50.