The most commonly used measure of football program competitiveness is winning percentage, but winning percentage does not take into account the relative difficulty of the schedule. A ratings percentage index (RPI) could be calculated to modify a team’s winning percentage with strength of schedule elements but this approach is not common in football and RPI will not be used in the new playoff selection process. Fans and analysts often use wins against teams in the top 25 polls to measure competitiveness, but the limitation of this approach is that the polls can be subjective in nature and the membership in the poll changes over the course of the season.

One potential metric that can be used to denote quality wins and competitiveness is to determine the number of wins over conference opponents that finish the season with a record > 0.500 (overall, not conference record alone). Since the programmatic goals are to: (i) instill a winning philosophy, (ii) foster and maintain competitiveness, and (iii) win conference championships, an objective competitiveness metric is desirable to mark the progress of a program toward these goals.

OSU record vs conference opponents with >0.500 record and number of conference opponents on schedule with >0.500 record (click to enlarge)

In the graphic above, the number of OSU wins over conference opponents that finished the season with an overall record > 0.500 (orange line) is illustrated. OSU peaked in terms of quality wins against conference opponents (competitiveness) in the 2006-2009 period. Since 2009, OSU has had only 5 total wins over conference opponents with a record > 0.500 over the 4-year period ending in 2013.

The second line (black line) on the chart reflects the number of conference opponents on OSU’s schedule that finished the season with a record > 0.500. This approach does not include the winning teams that OSU skips on the schedule each season but is a pretty good indicator of how many good teams that OSU would need to beat to win a conference championship. From 2003 to 2005, each team in the conference played 8 opponents meaning that one conference opponent was skipped each year. A round robin schedule of 9 conference games (no teams skipped) was implemented in 2006 and ended with conference expansion in 2011. At present, each team still plays 9 conference games but 2 opponents are skipped each season.

There has been an increase over time in the number of conference opponents on OSU’s schedule that have an overall record > 0.500 despite skipping two opponents each year since 2011 and maintaining a 9-game conference schedule. Note the divergence between the orange line and the black line after 2009 – an indicator of how competitive OSU has been in the conference during the period. With a conference championship game, a Pac-12 team would likely need to win at least 4 games over conference opponents with records > 0.500, and possibly more.