re: Miami's 2026 schedule - the worst in the country among realistic title contenders?

Miami vs Notre Dame loser should automatically end up in Shreveport during bowl season.

And that Penn St schedule is pretty bad too.

The committee has to start factoring in SOS in a meaningful, quantifiable way.

You'd have to go pretty far to find an easier schedule than Indiana. They play ZERO P4 OOC games this year and their conference slate doesn't look that impressive either.

Notre Dame is equally crappy but they're a lock for the CFP because they will easily be ranked in the Top 12 by the CFP committee.

Oregon will get in and promptly shite the bed as all Lanning teams do. I'm not sure Michigan makes it.

appears to be on par with Notre Dame for trash among the media darlings who will be shoved down everyone's throats all season -

Miami 2026 Opponents - 73 wins in 2025
10 Notre Dame
9 Duke - ACC champ
9 Wake Forest
8 Pittsburgh
7 Central Michigan
7 Clem
5 FAMU
5 FSU
4 Stanford
4 North Carolina
3 Virginia Tech
2 Boston College

At ND is their only reasonably difficult game.

Not knowing what we don't know and solely looking at SoS based on last year's performance and projected SoS this year among Top 25 AP Preseason rankings (current contenders), Miami is bad but not the worst.

Weakest Top 25 schedules based solely on Phil Steele SoS:


Weakest Top 25 schedules weighting Steele SOS and SoS based on opponents' 2025 W-Ls:


Among the "contenders" ND and TX Tech seem to have the easiest CFP paths. PsU and Clemson are also up there with Houston and BSU looking like the G6 frontrunners for stealing a spot.

All that said, we won't know until Nov who really had the toughest schedule.

So with a favorable schedule and not having to face Ohio State Penn State will finally get a playoff berth or they lose a couple they shouldn't and don't, neither outcome would surprise me.

Matt Campbell was the Big Fish at Iowa State, playing penny ante poker and winning more than he lost.

Now he is at the 100-dollar-a-chip table and banking on being able to take his coaching to the next level but he cannot afford to lose.

Maybe Iowa State wasn't such a bad gig after all.