Strength of Schedule Adjustment

Overview

This pillar adjusts raw team statistics to account for the quality of opponents they have played. It provides a truer measure of a team's strength, preventing overvaluation of teams with easy schedules.

What It Does

It normalizes performance metrics like points per game or yards per play by comparing them to how a team's opponents typically perform. The pillar calculates if a team's performance was above or below expectation in each game given the opponent's strength. This process reveals if a team is genuinely elite or simply a product of a weak schedule.

Why It Matters

Raw stats can be incredibly misleading, especially early in a season when schedules are unbalanced. This pillar provides a significant predictive edge by identifying underrated, battle-tested teams and overrated teams with inflated records before the broader market catches on.

How It Works

First, the pillar collects raw game-by-game stats for a team. Then, for each opponent played, it gathers that opponent's average performance against all their other opponents. It then calculates the difference between the team's performance and the opponent's average, creating a game-level adjustment. Finally, these adjustments are aggregated across the season to produce a final schedule-adjusted rating.

Methodology

The core calculation involves determining an opponent adjustment factor for each game. For offense, this is calculated as (Team's Offensive EPA vs Opponent X) minus (Opponent X's average Defensive EPA vs all other opponents). These game-level adjustments are then aggregated, often weighted by recency, to create a season-long opponent-adjusted efficiency rating.

Edge & Advantage

This provides a clear edge by quantifying schedule difficulty, allowing you to bet against teams with inflated stats from weak schedules before their lines adjust.

Key Indicators

• Opponent-Adjusted EPA

  high

  Measures a team's efficiency (Expected Points Added) on a per-play basis, adjusted for the quality of the opposing unit.

• SOS Ranking

  medium

  A numerical rank of the cumulative difficulty of a team's past or future schedule based on opponents' power ratings.

• Resume SP+

  high

  A college football-specific metric measuring a team's accomplishments against its schedule, rewarding quality wins.

Data Sources

• TeamRankings.com

  Provides publicly available strength of schedule rankings and opponent-adjusted statistics.

• CollegeFootballData API

  Offers programmatic access to advanced stats, including data needed for opponent adjustments and SP+ ratings.

• ESPN Stats & Info

  Source for Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings, a premier opponent-adjusted college football power rating system.

Example Questions This Pillar Answers

• → Will Ohio State cover the -21.5 spread against an undefeated but untested Indiana team?
• → Is Oregon's #1 ranked offense legitimate, or just a product of playing weak Pac-12 defenses?
• → Which 1-loss SEC team has the best chance to make the playoff based on their schedule strength?

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