The Strength of Schedule (SoS) view is also on the Teams Page.
A team's SoS is determined by looking at the combined records of a team's opponents, and the combined records of the opponents' opponents. You may adjust user parameters to calculate your own SoS.
The terminology can be somewhat daunting, so let's define a few terms.
| • | SoS - Strength of Schedule |
| • | TT - Target Team, the team whose SoS we are calculating |
| • | OT - an opponent of the TT |
| • | OG - any game the OT plays |
| • | OOT - an opponent of the OT (i.e., TT's opponent's opponent) |
| • | OOG - any game the OOT plays |
No game involving the target team is used - ever. Any SoS calculation needs to be entirely separate from the TT. When you list every OG and every OOG, games involving the TT will appear for several reasons...
| 1. | Every OT plays the TT (obviously) - this game is not processed. |
| 2. | The TT is its own OOT (once for each opponent) - TT's games are not processed as OOGs. |
| 3. | If a team has OTs that play each other, then those OT teams will also appear as OOTs. If you choose to allow an OT to appear in the OOG list, then the game against the TT will show up again. Again, this game is not processed. |
| • | When opponents play each other |
Interesting things happen when OTs play each other. In the OG list, a game between OTs appears twice, once from each OT's perspective. This means the two games cancel each other out (i.e., the W-L record is always 1-1, .500). If a TT has several OTs that play one another (which is common with most teams), then the TT's SoS will be skewed toward .500. If the goal is to fine the team with the best Strength of Schedule, then pulling the numbers down toward .500 is not a good thing.
Another side effect from OTs playing one another is that the OTs also appear as OOTs. You must ask yourself whether you want to process the OGs again as OOGs.
At this point, I suggest you view your favorite team's SoS in Football Rankulator. Set the Display type to Verbose, set the Reference Date to a mid-season date, then bring up the SoS Options dialog. Experiment with the settings and watch what happens.
| • | Processing Games |
Wins against non Division 1-A teams are never processed. (Note: the datasets provided with Football Rankulator do contain games results of Division 1-A and Division 1-AA games. This means that games against non Division 1 teams are not propagated in the SoS).