According to Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman, the UCLA Football team has the second toughest non-conference schedule in the country this year.
Not only that, but two other Pac-12 teams are in the top 3 along with the Bruins. Southern Cal’s schedule was rated toughest and Stanford was tied for third with Ohio State.
The obvious joke Bruin fans can make when discussing tough schedules is that the reason Southern Cal’s schedule is tougher than UCLA’s is because Southern Cal has to play UCLA while UCLA plays Southern Cal.
But, the reality of the situation is that this is ranking only the non-conference part of the schedule and it doesn’t take conference games into consideration. Feldman assigned a point value to each opponent and gave bonus points for road and neutral site games and then averaged the total.
So, with Southern Cal playing Alabama in a neutral site game, it was pretty obvious that their non-conference schedule would be considered tougher than UCLA’s even though UCLA starts the season against Texas A&M in College Station.
In a separate article, Feldman had previously ranked Washington’s and Arizona State’s non-conference schedules as the second and the fifth easiest, respectively.
Go Bruins!!!