People try to use SoS for various purposes, but they usually only talk about part of it.

For people that play a lot of crappy teams, they'll highlight the top-end of the schedule or the "brand" teams they beat. Others, without a marquee win, might talk about the average SoS of all teams. Which schedule is harder? 12 teams that finish 6-6. Or 10 teams that finish 6-6, one that finishes 0-12 and one that finishes 12-0? Now, what about the mix - you can see why so many people can use parts of SoS to make whatever point they need to make.

I put together this visualization to try to show all aspects of SoS. This is based on SP+ ratings through 11/2/2019. The box plot in the middle of each team shows the median (50%) and the quartile ratings (25% and 75%) of their opponent's SP+ rating. You can clearly see the good opponents at the top and the bad opponents at the bottom. The violin shape in the background of each team paints the picture more thoroughly than any single number does. Each violin has the exact same area of the other violins so the shape and distribution are what is important.

What do you think? I'll keep updating each week for the top 6 in the CFP poll. This only includes opponents for games that have been played. Perhaps, I'll do a forward-looking one, to show what the full schedule including future games, would look like for each team.

***Click the link to go to an interactive version, where you can hover over the dots to see the opponent and rating and filter out bad opponents.

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/880609/

Thanks - Jeremy Michael Bright