Why Rece Davis is right about college football schedule comparisons

ESPN’s Rece Davis says comparing one conference to another based on the number of league games they each have is just plain silly.

He’s right. It is silly because the number of in-conference games isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison if one league has much stronger competition than another one.

Davis, speaking on the “College GameDay Podcast,” said, “In my judgment, the dumbest argument of all the arguments between the conferences is number of games played.”

As On3’s Thomas Goldkamp notes, evaluating teams that play a different number of conference contests is challenging. For example, the top two leagues in college football aren’t aligned in this regard.

The Big Ten Conference, which has won the past two national championships (Ohio State and Michigan), has nine league encounters, while the other powerhouse league, the Southeastern Conference, has eight.

It’s even more jumbled on a national scale, as the other power-four conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12 Conference, will play eight and nine league games, respectively, in the upcoming 2025 season.

Davis believes that the major conferences should play 10 league contests. 

“I think it’s better for the sport, I think players want to play it, it’s certainly better for television, the court will stipulate to that,” he said. “But nine versus eight … which nine in the Big Ten? Which eight in the SEC?”

The overarching challenge, though, is that teams’ schedules must get evaluated in their entirety, not just based on how many conference versus non-conference games they play. It’s also imperative to evaluate teams based on the quality of their opponents.

As an example, two teams in the same league or entirely different conferences that play the same number of league games could face extremely different foes. By extension, one team that plays eight league contests might have an easier — or tougher — docket than another squad that battles nine conference opponents.

Perhaps the College Football Playoff selection committee can develop a formula to delve into how to weigh schedules from team to team and conference to conference to evaluate schools most effectively.

“What they should do, it should be incumbent on the committee if that’s the way we go or incumbent on any formula we may devise — now I know that may make you shudder to devise a formula in there — but whatever we devise, take the schedule in its entirety,” Davis said.

The host of ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” program said that, last season, he thinks Florida had a more difficult schedule than fellow SEC school Texas, which reached the CFP semifinal round and is No. 1 in the preseason Coaches top-25 poll ahead of the 2025 campaign.

Davis added, “I would argue that Florida’s and Oklahoma’s eight-game schedule greatly surpassed Indiana’s nine-game conference schedule.” 

The Hoosiers reached the 12-team CFP last season.

Davis summed it up this way: “The schedule as a whole, all 12 games, whatever it is, a fair measure among all of the conferences, and this argument between eight and nine is foolish in my judgment.”