West Virginia Has Third-Toughest Schedule in College Football
Neal Brown has a lot of pressure on him to win this fall but doing so won't come easy. According to Pro Football Focus, West Virginia has the third-toughest schedule in the country if you go off of last year's records.
West Virginia's 2023 schedule (opponent's 2022 record)
at Penn State (11-2)
Duquesne (4-7)
Pitt (9-4)
Texas Tech (8-5)
at TCU (13-2)
at Houston (8-5)
Oklahoma State (7-6)
at Central Florida (9-5)
BYU (8-5)
at Oklahoma (6-7)
Cincinnati (9-4)
at Baylor (6-7)
I will say, it is difficult to rank strength of schedule solely based on the combined record of opponents from the year prior in today's world of college football. Every team has been hit hard by the transfer portal in one way or another but has also used the portal to help patch some holes. Every year is different. Just take what TCU did last year for example. No one had them anywhere near the College Football Playoff, much less toward the top of the Big 12.
The first month of the season will tell a lot about this year's group. Partially because of who they play in two of the first three weeks and partially because they play nearly half of their schedule in the month of September. If the Mountaineers can come out of that first month 3-2 or better, they should be in a good position to make a bowl game. They'll play each of the four new members of the Big 12 from the middle of the season on and by that point, those teams will begin to see the effects of the wear and tear of life in the Big 12 with a lack of depth.
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