Washington State Football: Cougars Have Fifth Toughest Schedule According To ESPN
By Nick Nordi
According to ESPN Stats and Info the Washington State Cougars have the 5th hardest schedule for the 2014 football season following UCLA, Utah, California, and Arkansas. USC falls right behind the Cougars at 6.
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The Cougars have had some of the nations toughest schedules in years past and that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any. The Cougars opened last season against BCS Champion runner-up, Auburn, a game in which they almost came away with a victory. Seven of the Cougars 2013 opponents were ranked in the top-25 at some point in the season and 4 of those were ranked at the time of the game.
UCLA has toughest schedule in D-I this year, according to ESPN's Football Power Index. 5 of top 6 are Pac-12 teams pic.twitter.com/hLmKcVQFbi
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) August 12, 2014
It is no surprise that the Cougars are ranked high with their schedule that they have for this season. Playing already ranked Oregon (4), Stanford (11), USC (15), Arizona State (18), and Washington (25) this season, the schedule doesn’t start easy and doesn’t end easy but the Cougars will look to steal a few of the games from ranked teams to help get to the top of the PAC-12. Below is the 2014 schedule for the Cougars.
- Rutgers
- @ Nevada
- Portland State
- Oregon
- @ Utah
- California
- @Stanford
- Arizona
- USC
- @ Oregon State
- @Arizona State
- Washington
Not only does ESPN Stats and Info have the Washington State football team ranked high but so does the NCAA according to their metric, they have the Cougars ranked with the 36th toughest schedule. The problem with the NCAA metric is that they only take the opponents win/loss record from last season . For example, they have UCLA ranked as the team with the 60th hardest schedule.
Phil Steele also has the Cougars ranked high but has them ranked as the team with the 18th hardest schedule for the 2014 season. Stanford and USC are right in front of the Cougars at 16 and 17 respectively. According to Steele, the PAC-12 has 8 of the top-25 hardest schedules.