Scheduling FCS Opponents
Monday, March 4, 2013 at 07:00AM 
In 1997, there were 112 Division 1-A (now called FBS) college football teams. 36 of those teams played at least one game against a lower-division opponent. 77 percent of D 1-A teams played only games against other D 1-A opponents.
In 2013, there will be 125 FBS college teams. Only 19 of those teams are scheduled to play only games against other FBS opponents: Central Florida, Florida Atlantic, Hawaii, Miami (OH), Michigan, New Mexico, North Texas, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Penn State, Rice, Southern Mississippi, Stanford, Texas, Tulsa, UCLA, USC, UTEP, and UT-San Antonio.
In 2006, the NCAA expanded the rules for bowl eligibility to allow FBS teams to qualify for bowl games with a non-losing (.500) record. This rule change coincides with a significant increase in the percentage of teams scheduling at least one FCS opponent.
Reader Comments (1)
I am hopeful that if they implement a more reasonable playoff system where winning the conference pulls more weight and out of conference wins/loses less, that teams will drop all the cupcakes and we'll see some better out of conference scheduling. College football has too many one sided match-ups, this isn't NCAA tournament basketball, the big underdogs usually just get crushed.