This article is part of our College Football Draft Kit series.
With Underdog launching a new Best Ball product to the market featuring $100,000 in prizes, I've compiled a schedule grid, and key stats that include Strength of Schedule, Playoff strength of schedule and team bye weeks with red highlighting the most popular of byes. The sheet can be found on Google below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_1Nsuf0IhUABCEEIq4vovDP1qK5U6dfJV0PygEXkfH8/edit?usp=sharing
UPDATE: Major h/t to @eliotmays on Twitter/X for some significant upgrades to the initial sheet including using SP+ ratings rather than ranks (probably should have done that myself initially) and adding the ability to weight the strength of schedule and playoff strength of schedule to adjust team rankings to your liking. I have also added a Lineups Tracker with bye weeks, since Underdog's site doesn't include the bye weeks for players.
Methodology
The methodology here is pretty simple: I ranked all of the defenses based on SP+ defensive rankings (separated from overall SP+ to emphasize opposing defenses) and summed each team's schedule up to determine the most and least difficult. Bye Weeks are given a zero, as it's worse to have a bye for fantasy than to play the toughest defense (Ohio State is SP+ Defense rank 1). Even though it's possible a few FCS teams are better than some of the worst FBS opponents, I have just grouped them together, and all FCS opponents receive a rank of 135 (one below the lowest FCS team).
Thus, teams with three bye weeks tend to float lower on the list (three zeroes) than they otherwise would based solely on strength of schedule.
College Football Underdog Best Ball Strength of Schedule
Here is a look at the top 10 easiest strengths of schedule based on SP+ opponent defense rankings.
Unsurprisingly, Oregon State and Washington State sport the easiest schedules as part of their shift out of the power conferences in 2024. Among those still in the power ranks, Syracuse, Utah, Kansas, and Arizona all sport both weak overall strength of schedules and top-20 playoff strength of schedules. Syracuse also fits the bill as a team whose bye weeks don't fall on any of the most popular, leaving players like Oronde Gadsden and LeQuint Allen as good pairing options for byes.
College Football Underdog Best Ball Playoff Strength of Schedule
Underdog's playoff format begins in Week 12, so the playoff Strength of Schedule column gives us a view of the teams with the easiest schedules when the money is on the line.
One team that really sticks out is Georgia, whose playoff schedule includes the likes of UMass (130 DEF SP+) and Georgia Tech (99 DEF SP+) along with a high-scoring Vols team that may require the Bulldogs to put points up as well.
Another interesting note is that three-bye SMU sports a relatively favorable playoff grouping of opponents and a decent strength of schedule, even when factoring in the three bye weeks. Week 3 includes 10 total bye weeks, but Week 7 and 10 have 19 and 20 teams on bye, respectively, so you'll have to work around those to roster the Mustang players, but the playoff returns could wind up being a differentiator.
I hope this all helps and best of luck in your drafts! Feel free to reach out if you have an questions or suggestions on how I can improve this.
