How many wins (minimum) makes you happy next season?

[bennyl08]

It does not make the least bit of sense to couch an analysis of schedule difficulty in a review of changes on our own team. Is the 2017 schedule more difficult than 2016, or is it not? You can't say "oh but we'll be better too," because that is irrelevant.

Let me simplify this: Will our opponents in 2017 have better records against other teams (not us) than they had in 2016?

It makes just as much sense as talking about the teams themselves. It makes no sense to talk about improvement or lack there of, of the teams on our schedules either, yet you decided for some reason that was an integral part of the discussion, for some reason.

Let's be clear what we are talking about. For example, your simplifying question shows that you are discussing a very, very different subject than me. Let's look at your "simple" question. Will our opponents in 2017 have better records against other teams than they had in 2016? Do you realize what all goes into that? You now have to ask how virtually every other team in the country improves to answer that question. Using the record of your opponent to judge SoS makes sense in the NFL where you play almost half the other teams and every is on nearly the same level. In college, however, that doesn't make much sense. If we were to play a 9-3 sun belt team, is that really going to be a tougher game than an 8-4 PAC 12 team? Not a chance in hell. Teams in the mountain west are going to similar opponent records to teams in the SEC. When the quality of the opponent for different teams varies so drastically, opponent w-l record really doesn't say much of anything about strength of schedule.

What about the way I was initially setting things up? That takes a frame of approach with the difficulty of the schedule being something different from the sum of the difficulty of the games, which is what you were attempting to do. Lets say we play the same schedule in 2017 as we did 2015. That is close to being true. Does it really make sense to have identical schedules not be identically difficult? Sure, the individual games on the schedule may be harder or easier, but the schedule itself is the same. Again, goes down to are you rating the schedule inherently by the schedule itself or is the difficulty of a schedule determined by the summation of the toughness of the teams?

This leads to the final point. First, to be fair, it must be noted that I wasn't strictly looking at the schedule itself, but instead was inserting some qualitative assumptions about the difficulty of the teams themselves. I.e. Bama will be tough and likely a loss either way. So, what makes what I was doing different from you? Year to year variability. A difficulty of schedule, as I mentioned before, has to have some way of showing what teams are tougher vs what teams are weaker. Difference b/w you and me is that I'm looking at the generalized difficulty of the opponent. I.e. How tough have they been over past 5 years or at least under their current leadership? How good has that leadership been their past several years as a leader? Etc... You on the other hand are essentially doing the opposite. Your assessment on difficulty is more based on the the change a team makes from one year to the next rather than the mean. Which leads us back to whether or not it makes sense to include our own year to year variability. First, an exercise. If you see Iowa St on the roster, how tough of a game is that going to be? That is entirely dependent on who you are talking to. For a team like UCA? That would be an upset for the ages to win that game. For a team like Alabama, that would be an upset for the ages if they lost. So, the difficulty of the opponent being judged is highly dependent on how good the team in question is. Okay, but I just went from UCA to Bama, that's is obviously a huge difference, and this is a hog board, we are just talking about the hogs. If that was your reaction, not a bad one to had. I went to the extremes to illustrate a point. However, that point is just as valid when talking about the hogs. For example, how difficult of an opponent is Tulsa or Miss St? If we are talking about 2012, Tulsa is a toss up and MSU might as well be Bama. If we are talking about 2014, Tulsa staying within 21 points our victory would be very dissapointing and MSU is very much a game within reach of winning. MSU really isn't any different as a program right now than they were in 2014 than they were in 2012. Some small interannual variability, but they haven't yo-yo'd from being an unbeatable team to a team we expect to beat. However, the quality of the hog's team has yo-yo'd from one that can't beat ULM to one that can go toe to toe with top teams in the country and back to middle of the pack SEC. You can't judge the toughness of another team without making some type of judgement on the team you are comparing them to. It is then dishonest to judge year to year variability in the toughness of the opponent while ignoring the year to year variability in the toughness of the team whose schedule is being judged.

[NuttinItUp]

The vast majority appears to be clustered around 8 or 9 wins.

That is very doable, I think.

[31to6]

Let me simplify this: Will our opponents in 2017 have better records against other teams (not us) than they had in 2016?

Given that anyone can drop a game:

Alabama. Same.
Auburn. Same.
LSU. Better.
MSU. Better.
Ole Miss. Same.
aTm. Worse.
TCU. Better.
Missouri. Better.
USCe. Same.

This will make going at least 2-1 @ South Carolina, Ole Miss & aTm critical for an improved Razorback outing.

[LZH]

Damn benny, you got carpal tunnel yet?

[NuttinItUp]

Damn benny, you got carpal tunnel yet?

He was building a great wall of text to keep the illegals out.

[Calihog2012]

9 wins would nice but another 7 win season wouldn't be acceptable i feel

[HamSammich]

Great poll actually. Let's the winners in life know how many quitters are hog fans. +1

[Youngsta71701]

9 wins would nice but another 7 win season wouldn't be acceptable i feel

What about 8?