College football schedules as we’ve come to know them are about to change forever, potentially multiple times over the next few years.
Who knows how many conferences we’ll have, what those conferences will look like and who will play whom after all the jockeying and realignment ends — if it ever does?
But despite the upheaval — as we take a deeper dive into examining the 2022 schedules — keep in mind a phrase that will stand the test of time as long as there’s college football: Ain’t nobody played nobody.
We’ll hand out a few schedule superlatives for the 2022 season, and remember that some superlatives aren’t always so “super.” All rankings referenced are from ESPN’s latest Way-Too-Early Top 25. Also, it’s about this time every year we bring out Steve Spurrier’s line from his old coach Pepper Rodgers that a coach is “only as good as his players and his schedule.”
For what it’s worth, the two teams that played for the national championship last year — Alabama and Georgia — combined to face during the 2021 regular season just three Power 5 teams that managed more than eight regular-season wins. The Crimson Tide and Bulldogs also combined to produce 22 selections in the 2022 NFL draft, including 11 players taken in either the first or second rounds. The defending national champion Dawgs had a record 15 players drafted, the most since the draft moved to a seven-round format in 1994.
Now, on to our selections:
Toughest overall Power 5 schedule
A handful of schools can make strong cases here, including Auburn, Georgia Tech, Indiana, LSU, Mississippi State, Stanford and Vanderbilt. But for the second straight year, Arkansas’ schedule is brutal, with five games against top-25 teams. The Hogs are one of five Power 5 teams (Georgia Tech, Oregon, Stanford and Texas Tech the others) that have two nonconference games against ranked…
Source : espn
