FSU Football: Strength Of Schedule Helped By Old Enemies, New Friends

Past strength of schedule often proved a hinderance for FSU football’s path to a BCS title. With ACC improvements and the playoff system, things changed.

Finally, we may be able to put to rest the feeling that the Atlantic Coast Conference is a tier below the other power conferences in college football. Success on the field is obviously the biggest help, but for years, the strength-of-schedule argument has played against the elite teams in this conference, leaving them on the outside looking in when everything else seems equal.

With a potential playoff berth on the line in 2016, the Florida State Seminoles are finally set up to vanquish that feeling.

Last year, it took an undefeated regular season for the Clemson Tigers to earn a berth in the College Football Playoff. That had always been the benchmark: ACC teams needed to go undefeated to secure a top-four finish. But in 2016, FSU football has an edge thanks to one of the better overall schedules in the country.

According to ESPN’s FPI, the Seminoles have the third-toughest schedule in all of college football this year. Other periodicals aren’t so kind, or so tough depending on how you look at it, but still rank FSU’s as a top-15 slate. The season kicks off with a great neutral-site matchup against Mississippi.

Ole Miss is coming off of its best season in more than a decade. The Rebels won 10 games and the Sugar Bowl. They had a top-10 scoring offense last year, averaging 40.8 points per game, and return this year with quarterback Chad Kelly, one of the frontrunners for SEC Player of the Year and perhaps the Heisman Trophy as well.

The Rebels are just one of five teams FSU faces that are in the country’s top 20 in FPI. The others are in-state rival Florida and three ACC schools that have made strides into the national conversation: Louisville, North Carolina and, of course, Clemson.

Florida was lacking on offense a year ago, but had an elite defense and good special teams to lead them to 10 wins. Louisville and North Carolina normally find themselves on the outside looking in to the top bowl games and national championship hunt. Each has an improved roster though with ACC title aspirations. North Carolina especially took things all the way to the wire a year ago in the ACC and will be expected to build on that this coming season.

Then, there’s Clemson. The Tigers may not have anywhere to go but down from the heights they reached last season, but FPI still ranks them as a top five team in the nation. The October 29th game between them and the Seminoles will be another doozy with so much on the line.

It’s a bit weird to surmise that Florida State is set up perfectly well this season in terms of schedule strength when they have better than a 60 percent chance of winning each game this season (again, according to ESPN’s metric). Even the Clemson game heavily favors the home Seminoles. But winning all 12 of their games will only happen roughly 10 percent of the time based on projections. Those are good odds but not good enough to bank on going undefeated.

Fortunately, no longer will an ACC favorite be at the mercy of perfection or the voting constituency to put it above a team with a worse record when the playoffs are on the line. The rest of the conference is coming up to FSU’s level in terms of execution on the field and a well timed out-of-conference date with Ole Miss helps tremendously.

Next: See The Top 15 Offensive Players FSU Will Face in 2016

Now, Florida State will control its own season and earn its ranking by traversing a very serious schedule that would hold up in any conference in the country.