How the strength of schedule may play a factor in College Football Playoff championship game

Michigan and Washington enter their national championship showdown on Monday as undefeated conference champions. But both of their roads to the College Football Playoff title game looked a little different, with many regarding the Pac-12 conference that the Huskies hail from as superior to Michigan’s Big Ten this season.

With that in mind, On3’s Andy Staples and JD PicKell discussed the strength of schedule of the two teams and how it could potentially impact the outcome of Monday night’s marquee matchup.

“That’s another interesting piece of this, the Pac-12 was much deeper than the Big Ten this year,” Staples said. “Michigan had to play two tough games in Big Ten play, Penn State and Ohio State, and then obviously they had to beat Alabama. Washington has been challenged again and again.”

Michigan made easy work of most of their opponents this season, leading the nation in point differential with an average win margin of 25.8 points per game.

Washington on the other hand faced ranked opponents five times before the start of the College Football Playoff, wining seven one-score games prior to the CFP where they proved themselves to be one of the most battle-tested teams in the country.

“And it’s one of those things where you check the comment section, people will say, ‘You don’t really know Washington. You picked against them all year.’ It’s like no, I just keep picking them to eventually lose a close game and that’s why everyone’s kind of had this opinion on Washington,” PicKell explained. “So there’s the experience factor for Michigan but then there’s this just steady heart rate that Washington’s had the entire course of the season.”

The Huskies may have the edge in experience when playing in crunch time this season, but the Wolverines are fresh off of a down-to-the-wire, overtime win over Alabama in the Rose Bowl that got them over the hump and into the national championship game.

“Now we got to see Michigan live that life, Michigan trailed in the fourth quarter for the first time all year against Alabama. They handled it, they figured it out. So we know they can, we know they’re capable,” Staples said. “If they’re down going into the fourth quarter you’re not bailing on them, you’re not saying well these guys don’t know what they’re doing. We just saw them do it against a really good opponent.”

Staples continued sharing his excitement regarding the unpredictability of this year’s championship game in what’s slated to be a close contest featuring two teams with contrasting styles of play. Which PicKell cosigned ahead of Monday night’s exciting showdown that kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET and airs on ESPN.

“There’s no tells when you look at this whole thing. There’s so many different types of games that could play out whether it’s maybe we see Washington kind of control time of possession and we have a game that ends up being played in the 20s. You and I talked about yesterday, we could see a 48-45 shootout kind of game. The fact that either one of those could play out and I don’t think anybody would be surprised just speaks to the versatility of both teams in my opinion,” PicKell concluded.