West Virginia is one of four teams with eleven Power Five opponents

The 2019 college football season is rapidly approaching and for first year West Virginia head coach Neal Brown sleepless nights are also around the corner.

Not only will Brown have the challenge of adjusting to Power Five football, new players, environment and so forth, but he will do it in a very unique situation.

West Virginia is one of just four schools that have eleven Power Five opponents on their 2019 schedule. The other schools being Stanford, Boston College and Purdue. This however, won’t be the last time the Mountaineers will be in this situation. For the next five years, West Virginia will play all but one of its games against Power Five schools.

2020- Florida St, Maryland

2021- @ Maryland, Virginia Tech

2022- @ Pitt, @ Virginia Tech

2023- @ Penn State, Pitt

2024- Penn State, @ Pitt

With this current pattern, I would expect athletic director Shane Lyons to schedule more Power Five programs for 2025 and beyond. This may not be the best strategy in terms of bolstering your schedule with easy wins, but I for one, love it.

No offense to James Madison, Duquesne, Albany and other future FCS opponents on West Virginia’s schedule, but no one wants to see those games. The NCAA certainly needs to do something in regards to how teams schedule, but don’t expect them to intervene anytime in the near future.

Playing eleven of twelve Power Five teams each year could also help recruiting efforts. How? You may ask. Well, it means better competition and possibly more opportunities to play top players from other conferences in front of NFL scouts.

Also, it is beneficial to have these difficult schedules when you have an opportunity to make the College Football Playoff and need to have a strong strength of schedule.

Lyons has done a good job of putting long time rivals on the future schedules, but has also set a home and home series with national power Alabama. West Virginia is not afraid to play anyone, it’s pretty clear cut. If Lyons has an opportunity to schedule the best, he’s going for it. As a fan, you have to love that.

The Big 12 conference as a whole does a pretty good job of scheduling other P5 teams and has scheduled the most on average of the power conferences. Below is a list of the conferences and total games vs P5 opponents and the average for each conference for 2019.

1. Big 12- 100/10.0

2. PAC 12- 118/9.8

3. Big 10- 136/9.7

4. ACC- 132/9.4

5. SEC- 127/9.1

The SEC has always been bashed for its schedule strength or lack there of and rightfully so. This is why scheduling harder is a good thing. You don’t want to have the reputation of scheduling yourself to a bowl game. With the way the Mountaineers are going, that scheduling reputation is protected.