This is an exciting year for college football. This is the first year since 1981 that Clemson is ranked #1. But what has the schedule looked like to get there, and how does it compare to other elite teams?

Below is an interactive visualization of the network of FBS teams so far. Each circle represents a team, where colors represent the conference, and the large circles are the top 25 ranked teams. Independent teams are colored with gray.

Teams that are drawn near each other tend to have similar schedules, whereas teams far apart have much different schedules.

The lines represent a game played between two teams. The shorter the line the more normal the game fits within a schedule; most games within the same conference will have short lines, such as Stanford playing UCLA, whereas a very long line is when Stanford played UCF. As you move your mouse over each team, the teams played will emerge. Try it out!

Graph Facts