⚡ CFB Dashboard

The comment above was "the NEXT UNT", not UNT specifically - meaning who will be this year's "unexpected in the preseason" team. With NIL, for the most part, it's anyone's guess. That said, if you are trying to prognosticate on that, it's as important, maybe more, to look at schedules. We recall Tulane of the 2010s tended to have schedules that were either front- or back-loaded with good teams vs. bad... We'd start out like 4-2 and everyone would think we were turning a corner, then finish 2-4 and people would think we collapsed. In some years it was the reverse. Truth actually was random scheduling quirks where we'd looked good against bad teams and lost to good teams, and we were actually average. And so it went with last year's UNT. UNT had a pretty light schedule last year except USF and Tulane. We saw what happened. The country was fooled into thinking UNT was some great top 25 team because they'd started undefeated long enough to garner notice. They got blown out by USF (who everyone imagined REALLY good because they'd beaten average Boise and bad UF), then ran off a bunch more easy wins. It was schedule more than actual quality*. Had they played USF in like game 3 and Tulane in like game 6, they'd have likely never sniffed the polls. * if UNT 2.0 (OkSt) dominates the Big 12 this year, I'll eat crow and admit this was a bad take. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.