A fun way to compare multiple team's strength of schedules

Every year, around this time, there is a huge debate over which team has the best strength of schedule and is most deserving of their rankings. There's always a lot of debate over whether a 2-loss team should be ranked above a 1-loss team or a 3-loss team over a 2-loss team because their schedule is harder. This is the little exercise I always do to make these decisions.

/1. Pick 2 "test teams" whose SOS you want to compare (For this exercise, I'll pick Stanford and North Carolina since if they both win this weekend, there will be some debate over who is more deserving of a spot in the CFP)

/2. Select a "base team". This should be a team that you know something about. It can be your favorite team, so long as your favorite team isn't one of the best fifteen or so teams. (I will choose Tennessee)

/3. Pull up the test teams' schedule. For reference, here is Stanford's:

And here's North Carolina's:

/4. Now comes the fun part. Go game by game, and mentally simulate the outcome of the games between your base team and the test team's Opponents. Each test team's SOS score is the number of losses your base team had against it. Which ever SOS has the highest score is harder. To decide if a one test team is better than another, simply subtract the number of losses they had on the season from their SOS score. So if Tennessee had Stanford's schedule, their season might go something like:

So if Tennessee had this schedule, I would say that they go 7-5. This gives Stanford's SOS 5 points, since Tennessee would lose 4 games against it. Stanford themselves went 10-2, so they get a score of 3 since they did two games better than Tennessee

Now Against North Carolina's schedule:

So going game by game, I really think Tennessee is better than all of these teams so North Carolina's SOS is a 0. Since UNC lost a game, their team score is -1.

/5. Draw a conclusion. The conclusion from this example is that Stanford's harder SOS does indeed compensate for their extra loss, and they deserve to be ranked above North Carolina. If they both win this weekend, Stanford's score would go to 4 and UNC's would go to 1.

This is a really quick, and, IMHO, fun way to determine how good a team's resume is. It may not be statistically accurate, and it may be terribly flawed, but I think it produces a good output considering the time you need to put into it, and the prior knowledge you need to have. Also, this method requires that you be honest about how your team would really do against these other teams, and if your base team is too good, then every SOS would receive a low score, and if your team is too bad, then every SOS would receive a high score, so be careful about who you pick as a baseline.

Try this out, and let me know what you think!

Edit: Got UCLA mixed up with Cal. No, I don't think Tennessee would beat UCLA