Mega conferences with no divisions have led to imbalanced schedules that allowed teams like the Indiana Hoosiers to reach the College Football Playoff by facing eight of the nine worst teams in the Big Ten last year and having a strength of schedule outside of the top 100. The 2025 Tennessee Football slate proves that’s impossible for the SEC.
On Wednesday morning, Bill Connelly of ESPN released the projected SP+ schedule strength for teams. This basically ranks the schedules of teams based on the inaugural SP+ rankings of their opponents, which came out last week and you can see by clicking here.
In the projected strength of schedule rankings for 2025, the Tennessee Football slate is next to last in the SEC. Yes, it’s that easy. However, at the same time, the Vols have the No. 24 ranked strength of schedule in the nation. Behind them is the Missouri Tigers at No. 25, meaning every SEC team has a projected top 25 SOS for 2025.
If you look at the full slate, there are 10 Big Ten teams, or more than half the league, below the lowest SEC team. All B1G and SEC teams are in the top 40, which is as far as these SOS rankings go, but this data proves that the SEC is still the toughest conference when it comes to depth.
Taking this into account, while the teams you draw in your conference matter, SEC teams can still claim virtue of just playing in the conference when it comes to where they belong in the College Football Playoff rankings. That’s at least the case when it comes to preseason schedule strength.
Perhaps 18 teams playing a nine-game schedule somehow creates more imbalance than 16 teams playing an eight-game schedule, but it just seems more likely that the SEC is tougher. Of course, the CFP committee didn’t value SOS enough last year, so it’s not like this will matter.
Still, it’s clear that Tennessee has a decent enough path to get back to the CFP. Most of these SEC schedules are interchangeable, even with 12 of the 13 toughest projected schedules in the nation for next year coming from that league.
