Michigan Football Ranked Opponents 1984-2023
I have been beating the drum for better OOC games for years. I remember as a kid in the mid-80s being so excited to see Michigan play top ranked national teams like Miami, FSU, ND then into the 90s with CU and Washington as well. I used to take great pride in ou non-conference schedule, how we weren't afraid to play such a tough schedule. Our 1985 schedule is a great example, our OOC schedule included #13 ND, #15 South Carolina, and #17 Maryland.
From 1984 through 2003 Michigan played at least one ranked OOC opponent every single year, 30 ranked OOC opponents over those 20 years. Then starting with 2004 it's been absolutely dreadful, only 10 ranked OOC opponents over these last 20 years. Hearing Brian talk about this on yesterday's show, it got me a bit fired up. So I decided to take the time to do some research on this topic. I then decided to make a simple graph on this to help tell the story, probably my first one since my long days/nights in the media union on north campus.
I'm really hoping that the larger playoff system will begin to drive teams to start scheduling better OOC games as a resume builder as they target a top 4 and/or top 8 seed. Also, I have to assume schools will realize that losing to a ranked opponent early in the season won't be a death knell for a lot of 1 or 2 loss teams in making the playoffs like it has been in the past.
August 4th, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Then starting with 2004 it's been absolutely dreadful, only 10 ranked OOC opponents over these last 20 years.
How are we defining "ranked" teams? Ranked at the time or by the end of the season? I would assume you mean at the time insofar as that provides hype around the game. In which case, fair point.
But looking back under Harbaugh (since my memory is eh) they've played:
2015:
@Utah (finished 10-3 and got as high as #3 nationally but they started unranked)
2016:
Colorado (won their division at 10-4 but again started unranked)
2017:
Neutral site Florida (ranked so yay but they ended up sucking so not yay)
2018:
@ND
2019:
ND
(Army was coming off an 11-2 season so kind of ok there)
2020:
Covid so no OOC but would have been @Washington
2021:
Washington (major program scheduled during their Peterson era but by then wasn't good so not good but how are we assigning credit here?)
2022:
Bad year
2023:
Bad year
So really that's 2/9 years with no P5/major OOC opponent. That's kind of the nature of the sport now. SEC teams will usually have 1 major OOC opponent and then schedule an FCS team late in the season. Michigan's scheduling isn't out of the norm (with the exception of this year and last year due to the UCLA cancellations).
Under Hoke and RichRod I remember some doormats like UConn and UMass, but they also had games against ND and Alabama in there.
Screw it, I looked into it more.
2008:
Utah ended up top 5 that year for crying out loud and they also played ND. The problem was ND was mediocre.
2009:
ND
2010:
ND
2011:
ND
2012:
Alabama AND ND
2013:
ND
2014:
ND and Utah again (who finished ranked)
So Michigan doesn't get a ranked opponent in year X, but they play Notre freaking Dame and Utah who ends up top 5. But by this measure, that's a weak/poor OOC schedule. Meanwhile they play Florida, who is ranked, but ends up sucking so that's a "good" OOC year because why? Doesn't line up with common sense.
You are correct, but I don't think the OP's point was so much that M's weak preconference schedules are out of the norm--rather that the norm itself is bad and will hopefully change with an expanded playoff.
seems like an expanded playoff would reduce the desire to schedule hard opponents - especially OOC. SoS seems less valid when you have 12 slots vs 4
seems like an expanded playoff would reduce the desire to schedule hard opponents - especially OOC. SoS seems less valid when you have 12 slots vs 4
I think the reasons an expanded playoff could lead teams to schedule better OOC games are the following:
- A tough OOC loss doesn't hurt as much because with a 12-team playoff you can reasonably expect to qualify by winning your conference regardless;
- If you don't win your conference, a marquis OOC win could help get you in over other 10-2, 9-3 teams so maybe give yourself a shot at that;
- Overall, the need to schedule cupcakes so as to maximize the chances of going undefeated or very-close-to-undefeated is diminished.
I don't really know enough about the business side of college football to say whether these reasons will be enough to overcome some of the other impediments to stronger OOC schedules, but hopefully so.
No reason to dissect it that much. I am merely pointing out the trend of scheduling 1.5 ranked OOC opponents per year for 20 years to .5 for the last 20, including absolute dogshit two years in a row.
And I just used the rankings at the time that they played them for my data collection.
But that's kind of my point, you would look at a 2008 season and say that was a bad OOC year. 0/3 on ranked opponents. But they played (what ended up being) a top 5 Utah and a national power in ND. Any common sense would lead us to believe that was a very good OOC schedule but your metric makes it look bad.
Meanwhile, the 1985 season you initially talked about with ranked ND, SCAR, and Maryland - ND and SCAR both finished 6-6 (Maryland 9-3) so was that OOC schedule really that good upon reflection? No.
OOC games are scheduled years in advance. No one could have predicted playoff-level Washington (when Michigan schedule them) would be losing to FCS teams in 2021. So when Michigan scheduled the '85 teams, they weren't knowingly scheduling top-25 teams. That just so happened to play out that way that year in particularly. They don't get credit for scheduling a historically mediocre program in Maryland just because Maryland happened to have a good run of 8-4/9-3 seasons that overlapped with the 1985 matchup.
My overall point is, the era of 3 top 15 teams in the OOC schedule is over (don't really think it was ever a "thing" to begin with - just some random chance) and even when Michigan did happen to have OOC schedules line up that way, it wasn't always really a great schedule.
Does that suck for us because instead of watching Michigan v Oregon or something we get Michigan v Arkansas St? Yes, absolutely. But it doesn't help Michigan because a loss is too often too high a price and we're headed into an era of CFB where Michigan's conference schedule is going to be a rolling ball of knives.
August 4th, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
Cancelling the UCLA series was a huge mistake, it was made for cheap money savings. In all honesty, if we had not beaten OSU last year then it probably should have cost Warde his job. We have always had a good OOC schedule, but last year looked extremely bad on us since we were National title contenders. Other than that our non conference schedule has always been fine.
While I enjoy strong non-conference games, in the present (or before today "present"), cupcakes enhance chances of making the playoff.
Guess I'm still in the minority on the idea of getting excited about a September game ever again. Carry on.
So many high-profile non-conference games back in the day was exciting on one hand but college football was always so unbalanced schedule wise. You had powerhouse teams like Miami and Florida State putting up ungodly video game like win totals but they really only had to get up about twice a year.
The Big Ten was no longer the Big 2 and little 8. Teams like Iowa and Wisconsin were no longer cupcakes and the addition of Penn State plus playing our annual game with Notre Dame, who was....and I hate admitting this, an elite power when Lou Holtz was coaching them. Colorado may be a joke now but they were one of the most dominant programs in college football those times we played them in the 90's. You play that kind of schedule today and your title hopes are over in September.
By the way, does anyone remember our original non-conference schedule in 2002? It was Western Michigan, Washington, @ Notre Dame and Oregon. The athletic department thought that schedule was too difficult. So they rescheduled the Oregon game, which was supposed to be played at the big house, and got Utah instead. At the time, there were so many teams playing cupcake non-conference games so I thought this was a wise move. But Oregon didn't end up being that great that season. We could have been spared that utter disaster in 2007 if we left everything alone.
It should also be mentioned that big ten teams play 12 regular season games vs 11 games like they did prior to the 90s (including some of the 90s and 2000s). They play 9 conference games. Also now have a potential big 10 championship game. Additionally the potential of playing 2 games in the CFP and soon to be 3 games. And with USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington joining, I hope they continue to schedule 3 cupcakes out of conference.
Remember that the games were scheduled a few years prior to the game being played so maybe we are talking more about blue chip programs versus lesser programs more than rankings. Sometimes teams are not who we thought they were. A large factor in the BYU national championship in 1984 was their upset/blowout of Pittsburgh which was thought to be blue chip program at the time, but they had faded (without Dan Marino or Johnny Majors).
I wanted to keep Arkansas and UCLA. Backing out of those games was an embarrassment.
Dropping Arkansas got two games with Notre Dame. So I had no problem with that.
We also had a home and home dropped with Virginia Tech, I can't remember why that was dropped.
And don't we have future games scheduled against Texas and Oklahoma? I'm starting to wonder if those are up in the air now with all these new additions to the conference. Playing Oklahoma, Washington, USC, Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa all in the same year just doesn't seem likely.
We had to reschedule our trip to Seattle because of the covid season. If Washington is now a member of the conference, I guess that leaves an open date.