The question arises each year: Who plays the toughest schedule? At the beginning of the season, the NCAA releases a rating of each team's schedule based on its opponents' records from the previous season. This is a good method, but it does have obvious flaws.

The first flaw is simply basing the ratings on opponents' records from the previous season. Let's look at a few examples:

In 2014, I had TCU as my most improved team in the country. The Horned Frogs won 12 games and nearly made the first College Football Playoff in 2014. I also had Memphis as one of my most improved teams, and the Tigers won the Miami Beach Bowl, finishing 10-3 and ranked No. 25 in the Associated Press poll in 2014. However, if you used the NCAA method, you got credit for playing two teams that were a combined 7-17 in 2013 with TCU being 4-8 and Memphis 3-9.

Vanderbilt was clearly a much weaker team in 2014 than in 2013. It was coming off a 9-4 season but had only 10 returning starters and a new head coach. Fresno State had Derek Carr in 2013 and went 11-2 but last year had just 13 returning starters and was replacing an NFL starting quarterback. By the NCAA method of determining strength of schedule, you would have gotten credit for playing a pair of teams that were 20-6 the previous year, yet those two teams finished a combined 9-17 in 2014.

Last year, I pointed out that teams like Michigan (5-7 in 2014), Stanford (8-5 in 2014) and Northwestern (5-7 in 2014) were all much stronger in 2015. Those three teams, who combined for an 18-19 record in 2014, combined to go 32-8 in 2015.

The second flaw is that a team's record does not determine its strength. Let's look at two teams for this year and see which one is really the stronger team:

Last year, Western Kentucky went 12-2 while being led by senior quarterback Brandon Doughty. Tennessee was just 9-4. A closer look shows that WKU played a total of three Power 5 conference teams. Vanderbilt had a 20-11 first-down edge versus them and 385-246 edge in yardage, and WKU was lucky to escape with a 14-12 win over a team that eventually finished 4-8. In the other two Power 5 matchups, Western Kentucky lost to Indiana (6-7) on the road and was beaten by LSU in Baton Rouge 48-20.