Every year, the strength of schedule becomes a key focus of analysts when determining how good a team can be, and it's also a factor in college fantasy football projections.
RotoWire's 2026 projections (and a few previous years) have aimed to look beyond this season's strength of schedule and focus more on how it compares to the previous season as a better indicator of where a team's efficiency and output can go.
To do this, I take the final SP+ defensive ratings of the 2025 season, plop them into the 2025 schedule for each team, and then do the same with the preseason SP+ defensive ratings for the 2026 side of things.
Below is the end result for 2026.
Every year, the strength of schedule becomes a key focus of analysts when determining how good a team can be, and it's also a factor in college fantasy football projections.
RotoWire's 2026 projections (and a few previous years) have aimed to look beyond this season's strength of schedule and focus more on how it compares to the previous season as a better indicator of where a team's efficiency and output can go.
To do this, I take the final SP+ defensive ratings of the 2025 season, plop them into the 2025 schedule for each team, and then do the same with the preseason SP+ defensive ratings for the 2026 side of things.
Below is the end result for 2026.
College Football Strength of Schedule Takeaways
Power conference teams seeing natural increase in SOS in 2026
Some people may not realize that two conferences have added a conference game in 2026 (ACC and SEC). On top of that, every power conference team other than the Big Ten is required to face at least one non-conference power opponent. So, unsurprisingly, we see a significant uptick in the difficulty of schedule among these teams.
Here are the counts among the conferences for "easier" strength of schedule
- ACC: 3 (NC State, Stanford, Virginia Tech)
- Big 12: 3 (Kansas, Colorado, West Virginia)
- Big Ten: 5 (Wisconsin, Rutgers, UCLA, Illinois, Penn State)
- SEC: 0
- Notre Dame also faces tougher schedule
Year of the G5?
Naturally, with power conference teams facing each other more than ever, that means the G5 teams will likely face easier schedules than usual in 2026. That is indeed the case, with 45 of the 68 G5 teams (including UConn, NDSU and Sacramento State excluded as FCS teams last season) seeing lighter schedules than last season. That means this year, more than ever, you could gain additional benefits from unearthing those small conference gems that are going overlooked.
UMass leads the way here, seeing a massive drop of 69.3 in its strength of schedule for 2026. San Jose State is next in line, though it is skewed by a 13-game schedule. That still sits at +32.7 without the Week 0 USC matchup included.
Wisconsin players back in play?
By SP+, Wisconsin faced the toughest defenses in the country last season. This year, the Badgers face the easiest schedule in the Big Ten and only a tougher schedule than 10 other P4 teams, marking by far the biggest drop in SOS among the P4 teams at +75.8.
This should aid the Badgers in terms of fantasy output after what was a season to forget across the board, producing virtually no fantasy-relevant players a season ago.
Rutgers (+29.3) and UCLA (+24.0) are the only other P4 teams with drops north of 20, which I would consider notable drops in SOS.
SEC and ACC take biggest hits
Naturally, by virtue of these two conferences adding a conference game to the schedule, there is a general uptick in strength of schedule quality. While it may not play out that it's a detriment to all fantasy output here, it is a game of facing a conference foe instead of what would be a buy game versus a smaller school.
That figures to have a net-negative impact overall on fantasy output for the conferences as a whole.
