How many good teams would be 10-0 playing Indiana’s schedule this year?
Not many.
That’s what “strength of record” (SOR) measures, and it is playing a role in Indiana’s current No. 5 status in the latest College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday evening by the CFP Committee.
Indiana’s SOR according to ESPN’s FPI is No. 6. FPI describes SOR as “reflecting chance that an average Top 25 team would have team’s record or better, given the schedule.” In words, SOR measures the difficulty of achieving each team’s record, given its schedule.
The logic of SOR is sound. Indiana’s strength of schedule is just 100th according to FPI, but that includes noise from nonconference games against Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte. No one would argue Indiana played a challenging nonconference slate. And for what it’s worth, Indiana’s current coaching staff had nothing to do with any aspect of their 2024 schedule.
What SOR is saying is, okay, put aside those games. Any top-25 team would go 3-0 against those three opponents. But how many teams are going 7-0 against this run of games:
- at UCLA,
- vs. Maryland,
- at Northwestern,
- vs. Nebraska,
- vs. Washington,
- at Michigan State and
- vs. Michigan?
SOR says almost no one emerges from that unscathed.
And the Committee is going a step further with Indiana, and saying, not only did they go 7-0 in those games, they were dominant in doing so.
“We just felt as a committee that at this time Indiana has been playing very well, a close win against Michigan, but other than that, they’ve dominated everyone they’ve played,” CFP Committee Chair Warde Manuel said via teleconference Tuesday evening following the rankings reveal.
“A team with a weaker schedule, how they perform as well against the opponents that they play. So it’s an evaluation that takes into consideration strength of schedule but it also evaluates how you play against those teams that are on your schedule, whether it’s a strong schedule or a weak schedule and the performance of the teams on the field week to week and in totality when we look at what they have done over the season up until the point that we’re evaluating.”
Indiana is No. 2 in the nation in scoring offense with 43.9 points per game, and No. 7 in scoring defense at 13.8. So they’re winning this season by an average of 30 points per game. And even if you take out the nonconference games, Indiana is still winning their games in the Big Ten, one of the top two conferences in the nation, by a margin of 24 (40-16).
So for Indiana right now, the SOR plus scoring margin is compelling to the Committee.
And the Committee’s adherence to SOR will be put to the test if Indiana loses at Ohio State a week from Saturday. Because while one loss is a stain on their record, every other team in the country would be projected to lose in Columbus this year as well.
So ostensibly that loss, if it were to occur, should have no meaningful impact on IU’s SOR. That seems to be at least part of the story with No. 4 Penn State and No. 2 Ohio State, teams that have one loss but are currently ranked ahead of IU by the CFP. Penn State and Ohio State remain in the top four because their losses came to Ohio State and No. 1 Oregon, respectively.
Another fact to consider coming out of Tuesday’s rankings update is how the committee viewed Miami after its first loss. The Hurricanes dropped just five spots despite losing to a Georgia Tech team that looks on paper a lot like the Big Ten teams Indiana has blown out this season. So again, one Indiana loss at Ohio State should not sink the CFP ship.
With two games to go, the one thing Indiana needs to avoid in Columbus is a blowout loss. Because that could call into question their margin of victory against lesser competition to this point.
Of course there’s still a home game against last place Purdue, and still the wildcard potential for IU to play in the Big Ten Championship game.
But at the moment, Indiana’s place somewhere in the first 12-team CFP looks to be on pretty solid ground.
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