The Clemson football team gets a lot of grief over playing in the ACC. I don't think that people really look at the schedule Clemson plays. This tweet from Chris Lowe shows that maybe I am correct. Interesting stat over the last 3 years.
Let's Compare that to Alabama.
To break it down. Clemson has played 15 of it's 45 games against top 25 opponents. That comes out to 34% of the teams Clemson has played in the past 3 seasons have been against top 25 teams.I know! I know! The SEC apologists will tell you "Those wins were in the playoffs,not the ACC"
The tweet above shows that is not true. Clemson has 7 of its top 25 games in that period that were ACC teams. Texas A&M,Auburn twice and Notre Dame were scheduled out of conference and were in the regular season. That leaves the final 4 in the playoffs over that 3 year period.
When you look at Alabama they have the same amount of wins that Clemson has. They played just 2 more games against top 25 teams in that 3 year period. The kicker here is Alabama is 14-3. A great record...but in the end 2 of those losses come to Clemson.
If you look at South Carolina's Schedule over the past 3 years the gamecocks play 4 ranked teams in 2016
Florida,South Florida,Clemson and Tennessee
In 2017 3 ranked teams
NC State,Georgia,Clemson
In 2018 5 ranked teams.
Clemson,Georgia,Florida,Kentucky,Texas A&M.
The numbers on the gamecocks show they played 12 ranked teams out of the 39 games they played. This puts them at 30% of the schedule is a top 25 team. This shows that Clemson plays a tougher schedule than their rival and schedule that is on par with Alabama.
Think about the numbers...before you just throw out the "SEC Schedule is tougher"