CSI: Durham

Two things guaranteed to start a fight in any college town bar that's worth visiting:

1) Conference strength.

2) Schedule strength.

Most of the time the two are related but over the next four weeks the majority of the games we'll watch will be the dreaded and erratic non-conference games. Some are good match-ups, most are not but they will be used as argument fodder throughout October and November to determine everything from national title contenders to a coach's future to my personal worth (nice work this year, Nebraska).

But if there's so much riding on these games that really don't determine who eventually gets to the BCS bowls, shouldn't we look at which teams and conferences have done the best job scheduling out of conference from a fan's perspective in 2007? Yes, we should. That's why I created the Compelling Scheduling Index or CSI (oh, I get it...it's quite clever). I went through each BCS conference team and scored their schedule using the following criteria:

5 Pts. - Any Game vs. Top 20 Win% Last 15 Years (BCS only) - The best games are the big ones between big programs, Cal-Tenn., USC-Nebraska, VT-LSU, but games like this are scheduled years in advance. When USC-Nebraska agreed to a home and home Nebraska was USC and USC was Nebraska in terms of talent and ranking. Now it's the inverse. By using win percentage over the past 15 years I tried to account for that lead time. And sorry Toledo and Boise State, you qualified in terms of winning percentage but you're just not as compelling as Wisconsin or Penn State. BCS only.

4 Pts. - Any Game vs. Top 40 Win% Last 15 Years (BCS only) - The second tier. Keep in mind we're looking at successful programs over the last 15 years so there are some surprises here. While playing Alabama or West Virginia will always look impressive, based on their results over the past 15 years it's traditionally been less difficult than playing Kansas State or Oregon.

3 Pts. - Any BCS Team - Even seeing Northwestern play Duke is more intriguing than seeing Northwestern play Northeastern. At least Northwestern and Duke are working with similar resources. I do, however, like that symmetry in the Wildcats home opener.

2 Pts. - Rivalry Games - If you play a team every year you're not actively going out and scheduling them but a team should get credit for keeping that tradition alive. Therefore, Georgia Tech doesn't get a full five points for playing Georgia but they do get two for not dodging them in favor of a creampuff.

1 Pts. - Any non-BCS team on the road - If one of the Goliaths is willing to play a David on their home turf I'm interested.

-3 Pts. - Any 1-AA Opponent - I understand the reasoning behind these games, easy win, easy money for all involved, but fans hate these games. I can't reward big time programs for showering sacrificial lambs with money. Simply put, no making it rain on them foes in the CSI.

The Curious Case of Notre Dame - The Irish are still an Independent so I'm sure they won't mind being left out of my survey because their entire schedule is non-conference. For match-ups against USC, Michigan and Michigan State the game was scored as a rivalry game for those schools.

After totaling up each schools non-conference schedule, I divided that number by the number of non-conference games played to reach a CSI PPG score. This accounts for the fact that the Pac-10 only plays three such games while the Big East plays five.

The conference total was determined by adding the raw scores for each school and simply dividing by the number of teams in the conference.

With that out of the way, let's get to the results. You can see the entire spreadsheet here.

The Top Teams

0. Duke - You should know that Duke scored as high as any team in the country with games against UConn, Northwestern, at Navy and Notre Dame. However, no game involving Duke is compelling so now that you're aware, disregard this score. Cheers to the Blue Devils for scheduling up, however.

1. Washington - A classic case of the ambiguity we're working with here. Washington receives no points for playing Boise State, but they get four points for playing Syracuse. Fair? When they made the schedule it probably was. Throw in Ohio State and factor in the shortened Pac-10 non-conference schedule and you have your top team.

Tie 2. Miami and Florida State - They may not be what they once were, but these two will still play anyone anywhere. Between the two they'll play Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Colorado and Alabama. Congrats, but tell me again how Florida State is going to be resurgent this year?

4. Syracuse - Could be another long year for the Orange with games against Washington, Iowa, and Illinois. Yes, those teams are mostly down right now but Louisville and West Virginia aren't playing them.

5. USC - Nebraska and Notre Dame, simple as that. Pete Carroll has never dodged anyone.

Tie 6. Colorado & Wake Forest

8. Nebraska

9. Iowa

Of course the big question here is where's the SEC? LSU scored at the top of the conference with a CSI PPG of 1.5 based largely on their game against Virginia Tech. Outside of that, it's pretty slim pickings in the Southeastern.

The Conference Breakdown

Based on the top 10 teams above, you could've probably guessed that the ACC scored the highest of the BCS conferences. The totals are below:

1. ACC - 5.08

2. Pac-10 - 3.58

3. Big 12 - 3.16

4. Big East - 3.08

5. Big 10 - 2.00

6. Southeastern - 1.33

You might be skeptical of a system that ranks Duke as the team that scheduled the best this year and the SEC as the conference that did the worst but keep in mind we're not talking about schedule strength, rather trying to determine which teams went out and actually scheduled opponents with a pulse. Every team in the SEC except LSU will play a D-1AA opponent this season.

Are you interested in watching those games? Me neither. I'm also not that interested in seeing Duke play anyone but at least they're trying and that's the case CSI set out to solve.

Case closed?