Daily Blog •March 30, 2013

The question arises each year, “who plays the toughest schedule?” The other day I gave you, the NCAA’s method, which usually releases a rating of each team’s schedule based on their opponents’ win/loss record from the previous season. This is a good method but it does have its obvious flaws.

Today I thought I would continue my look at this year’s toughest schedules by taking a look at what team’s play the most bowl teams from a year ago.

While a majority of college football teams these days do go to bowl games (70 out of 124), any team that faces more than 8 bowl teams on their 12-game schedule usually have one of the tougher schedules in the country. For this particular exercise I did count teams like Ohio St, Miami, Penn St, North Carolina and Louisiana Tech as bowl teams as under normal circumstances they would have played in a bowl last year.

Here is the complete list of teams and the number of bowl teams they face this upcoming season.

Who Plays the Most Number of
Bowl Teams from 2012?

Rank Team # of Foes that
Played in a
Bowl Last Year
1 Notre Dame 11
1 Oklahoma 11
1 Kansas 11
4 Texas 10
4 TCU 10
4 Virginia 10
7 Oklahoma St 9
7 Penn St 9
7 North Carolina 9
7 Georgia Tech 9
7 Texas Tech 9
7 Baylor 9
7 Kansas St 9
7 Pittsburgh 9
7 Indiana 9
7 Arkansas 9
7 Utah  9
7 California 9
7 Iowa 9
7 UNLV 9
7 Iowa St 9
7 Illinois 9
7 Akron 9
24 Stanford 8
24 LSU 8
24 Arizona St 8
24 BYU 8
24 Michigan 8
24 NC State 8
24 Missouri 8
24 UCLA 8
24 Nevada 8
24 West Virginia 8
24 Kentucky 8
24 Wake Forest 8
24 Hawaii 8
24 Purdue 8
24 Colorado 8
24 Eastern Michigan 8
40 USC 7
40 Florida St 7
40 Nebraska 7
40 Wisconsin 7
40 Virginia Tech 7
40 Texas A&M 7
40 Miami, Fl 7
40 Boise St 7
40 South Carolina 7
40 Florida 7
40 San Jose St 7
40 Northwestern 7
40 Washington 7
40 San Diego St 7
40 Houston 7
40 Tennessee 7
40 Western Michigan 7
40 Troy 7
40 North Texas 7
40 Navy 7
40 Colorado St 7
40 Duke 7
40 Syracuse 7
40 Mississippi St 7
40 USF 7
40 Auburn 7
40 Boston College 7
40 Minnesota 7
40 Washington St 7
40 Memphis 7
40 Massachusetts 7
71 Ohio St 6
71 Georgia 6
71 Clemson 6
71 Tulsa 6
71 Michigan St 6
71 Oregon St 6
71 Mississippi 6
71 Toledo 6
71 Buffalo 6
71 Connecticut 6
71 Army 6
71 Maryland 6
71 SMU 6
71 Air Force 6
71 Tulane 6
71 Wyoming 6
71 Kent St 6
71 Central Michigan 6
71 Miami, Oh 6
71 South Alabama 6
71 New Mexico 6
71 Temple 6
71 New Mexico St 6
94 Alabama 5
94 Oregon 5
94 Northern Illinois 5
94 Fresno St 5
94 Bowling Green 5
94 Marshall 5
94 UCF 5
94 Utah St 5
94 East Carolina 5
94 ULM 5
94 Arizona 5
94 Rutgers 5
94 Vanderbilt 5
94 UTEP 5
94 UAB 5
94 Southern Miss 5
94 Texas St 5
94 FIU 5
94 UTSA 5
94 Idaho 5
114 Louisville 4
114 Cincinnati 4
114 Louisiana 4
114 Ohio 4
114 Ball St 4
114 Western Kentucky 4
114 FAU 4
121 Rice 3
121 Arkansas St 3
121 Middle Tennessee 3
121 Louisiana Tech 3