Per CBS Sports, among the group of five, GS has the toughest OOC schedule, App at #8.

http://www.cbssports.com/college-footba ... -strength/

The Sun Belt is represented pretty well in this SOS list. Unfortunately, this tends to correlate with the Sun Belt's OOC record.

I guess they are putting a lot of weight on the fact that Miami is a home game, but I don't see GaSo's OOC schedule any tougher than ours. Whatever.

MAD Doctor wrote:I guess they are putting a lot of weight on the fact that Miami is a home game, but I don't see GaSo's OOC schedule any tougher than ours. Whatever.

It's tougher for them. If theirs was our schedule, it wouldn't be as tough for us.

Not that it really makes any difference, but our four games collectively seem more difficult than theirs. We really don't have a breather in our OOC schedule like they do with Savannah State. Of course, they travel for three of their 4 OOC games.

About the only way I see theirs being stronger is that Western Michigan is expected to be better than either of our G5 opponents:

@ Tenn = @ Ole Miss (honestly I think UT will be better, but close enough)
Miami > @GT
Akron < @ WMU
ODU >> Savannah State

As hap stated, GS gets the nod due to the fact that 3 of 4 are on the road. If you just look at the teams and not home or away, App's is better since we don't have a FCS opponent and both play an ACC and SEC program. I'd say overall, GS probably gets the nod with overall schedule since they face both stAte and ULL. App loses stAte and USA and picks up 2 bottom feeders in the conference with TXST and NMSU.

moonshine wrote:As hap stated, GS gets the nod due to the fact that 3 of 4 are on the road. If you just look at the teams and not home or away, App's is better since we don't have a FCS opponent and both play an ACC and SEC program. I'd say overall, GS probably gets the nod with overall schedule since they face both stAte and ULL. App loses stAte and USA and picks up 2 bottom feeders in the conference with TXST and NMSU.

This is all about OOC schedule and has nothing to do with in conference SOS. I would tend to agree with others that App and GS have a very similar OOC SOS without any meaningful difference other than GS is on the road for 3 of 4. I also looked at some of the other rankings, i.e. UT and Miami, just to see how they ranked them. It looks like a schedule with 1 or 2 top tier opponents tend to drive the ranking higher than multiple mid-tier opponents.

For our schedule, you can see that ODU is not considered very good at all. Akron performed well last year but graduated the majority of their starters. Akron's big question is whether they can immediately reload and maintain the level of 2015 or will they return to the level of their rebuilding years from 2012-2014.

The fact that Southern goes a solid 40 days between their home game with Savannah St (Sept 17th) and us (Oct 27th) is unbelievable. I don't think I have ever seen a stretch that long on a teams schedule.

Dude spelled Appalachian incorrectly.

As soon as I read the top 3 the first thought was- money grab. Whatever

Where is my BS horn?!!!!!!!

Mad Max: Gotta be kidding me....these damn journalist......Big League Wrong.... believe me whew whee

I could't disagree more with Jerry Palm. To me it's simple. Who do you play FCS, G5 or P5 and I subdivide P5 into top 25 or lower P5.
Who do you play and what type of team you are matters more than where you play. Apps plays all D1 and no FCS ( 2P5 (2 top 25 and 2 G5's) vs GASO who plays 1 FCS 1 (close to ) top25 1 lower P5 and G5. Clearly Apps OOC is stronger. Either ODU or Akron would wax Savannah St. Simple.

The us versus them debate isn't what has me...the #2-7 is! How in the world do we have the 8th hardest OOC in our conference?! What in the world is this guy looking at?

Boone Goon wrote:The us versus them debate isn't what has me...the #2-7 is! How in the world do we have the 8th hardest OOC in our conference?! What in the world is this guy looking at?

It's not the 8th hardest in the conference. It is the 8th hardest in all of G5 (Sunbelt, CUSA, MWC, MAC, AAC).

There are 3 Sunbelt teams between Georgia Southern and us (South Alabama, ULM and Troy). All of those teams are playing two strong P5 teams (as are we) and a relatively strong G5 team. In most cases, they all play those games away. I think this just demonstrates what has been observed about OOC records for the Sunbelt in the past. Sunbelt teams tend to play very tough OOC schedules relative to most G5 conferences. That likely has to do with budgets and the proximity to the SEC (same footprint) which results in a lot of matchups between strong SEC teams and the Sunbelt.

It's like ANY pre-season listing....it's just a list. It is biased based on the history of those P5 teams and we really won't know much about how they actually compare until we are well into the season. It's just fodder for off-season message board discussions.