What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
Three stories, three perspectives. Let’s dig in.
The Strength of Schedule Sandwich
Perhaps the biggest thing that impacted the Big 12 this week was a report that the College Football Playoff committee will use a new metric to determine its playoff field this year.
A metric evaluating the strength of a team’s opponents within their conference. Is it a coincidence that it’s being added while SEC coaches are whining about playing a ninth conference game? You be the judge. Our Pete Mundo wrote about earlier this week.
The metric will apply to all conferences, so it’s not like it’s just for the SEC. CBS Sports reported that the move is being made to address “… disparity in conference schedules comes into greater focus following conference realignment.”
Turns out the metric has been around. It’s just being “emphasized” more this year. Again, I wonder why?
As CBS reported, the CFP staff met with SEC coaches earlier this year (as a matter of information, they do that with all conferences). Apparently, the SEC coaches were already grumbling about the nine-game schedule. They were also grumbling about a Big 12 team. Per the report:
“The coaches specifically expressed anger that Big 12 member BYU — which didn’t even make the playoff — finished ahead of Texas and Vanderbilt in the rankings. The Cougars were several spots ahead of both SEC schools in the most commonly cited strength-of-record metric, though the committee has its own internal metrics it declines to share.”
So, even though the SOS metric most of us use ranked BYU above Texas and Vandy, they were still ticked? Even though the four at-large SEC teams didn’t beat another power conference team in the CFP last year, they were still ticked?
Apparently “It Just Matters More” really means “It Just Matters That Our Teams Get in the Playoff Over Everyone Else’s.”
I think the SEC is betting this metric will help them. The other three power conferences better hope it doesn’t.
Actually — if you’re a Big 12 team, let them draw an SEC at-large team in the CFP and beat them. Apparently that’s happening a lot to the SEC these days.
The Scheduling Issues Persist
Speaking of scheduling, we still need to talk about power conference scheduling. While I applaud the SEC and the ACC for moving to nine-game conference schedules, the downhill effect has been them basically saying, “We won’t play the Big 12 anymore.”
Jeff Fuller posted this to X earlier this week: a list of cancellations by SEC and Big Ten teams with other teams across college football. While it certainly isn’t a comprehensive list, it shows the Big 12 losing a lot of games they were counting on to meet the league’s 10-game conference requirement.
Much of it is because the SEC is playing nine games and choosing to keep games against Group of 6 teams or FCS teams rather than keep the Big 12 games. This graphic alone shows Alabama canceling home-and-homes with Oklahoma State and West Virginia; BYU losing a home-and-home with Ole Miss and the 2023 game it lost with Tennessee; Texas Tech losing its home-and-home with Mississippi State and the potential neutral site showdowns with USC; and the rest are, no surprise, Big Ten or SEC teams canceling on ACC teams.
We need to schedule non-conference differently. We need to move away from contracts agreed to a decade in advance and get to a point where the power conferences can agree to year-to-year matchups based on the previous year’s records and a balance of all four conferences playing one another.
SEC and Big Ten teams shouldn’t be allowed to avoid the Big 12 and the ACC, nor should the Big 12 and the ACC be able to avoid the SEC and the Big Ten. Part of a great college football ecosystem is those four conferences playing one another. Using a different system would allow that to happen.
Until it does, we’ll keep seeing the SEC and the Big Ten cancel these games because they look down on the ACC and the Big 12. Of course, it would help a great deal for Big 12 teams to beat SEC teams when it MATTERS, which they haven’t done yet. But more opportunities in the regular season to build on that in the postseason would be a way to build better schedules and build strength of schedules that don’t require additional metrics.
You Too Can Pay Rivals to Scout Your Kid
Earlier this week Rivals (owned by On3) announced a service that would charge parents and their kids $499 for a scouting evaluation. Per Front Office Sports, the evaluation would include a scouting report, grade, film evaluation, coach interview, and consideration for ranking on their site.
Rivals has been around for a long time. It’s been evaluating players for years. So what’s different about this? Rivals and On3 leadership said it’s about serving players likely to be recruited by FCS programs and below. Shannon Terry, who founded both sites, posted that “1.04M kids played HS football last season. About 6,600 held a Rivals star rating … roughly 0.6%”
“That’s not a talent gap,” he posted. “It’s a capacity gap. Our scouts have always focused on FBS prospects, and FCS, D-II, NAIA and D-III kids rarely get their film watched.”
So, this addresses that gap? But if it’s a capacity issue, then how does this address it? Terry posted that it’s the “same scouts” doing the evals. Is he going to hire more? Or just ask the current scouts to do more with less, as is the wont in most corporate jobs? Essentially, they’re saying if a recruit isn’t a “starred” player, he’s not worth their time unless they’re paid to do it? It’s a business, I get it. But that just seems unseemly, and a lot of folks I came across on social media seemed to agree.
But Rivals/On3 is likely doing this for two reasons. First, they see a market for it and their job is to make money. Second, they know the colleges aren’t going to pay them for it. They do their own evaluations, and they don’t need a prep scout, no matter how good that prep scout may be at what they do, telling them how good or bad a player is. More and more college programs have their own personnel departments to do this.
But I’ll relate my own experience. My nephew played high school football, and he was a good player. His high school coaches were honest. He probably wasn’t a D-I player, but he had enough talent to play D-II or D-III if he wanted. They pointed him toward resources that would help, all of which cost him nothing and have been used by under-recruited players to get noticed.
My brother came across a paid resource and asked for my opinion. I asked someone who covered recruiting about paid services. He said it wasn’t worth it. He said the resources my nephew already had would serve him best.
That’s my best advice. Use the free services out there to get your kids noticed, and use paid resources only as a last resort. None of them are guarantees of a scholarship in any sport, mind you. But using what’s easily accessible first makes far more sense than forking over $500 when you don’t really know what you’ll get.
