Live Bet Saturday | August 8, 2026 | Hour 8

**Scott Seidenberg** (0:06)
Back here on Live Bet Saturday, I'm Scott Seidenberg on VSiN, The Sports Betting Network. As a majority of these major league baseball games here on this Saturday evening are coming to a close, including the Phillies and the Blue Jays, as Toronto gets the win in extra innings, seven to five, thanks to a two-run home run in the top of the 11th inning that was that Easton Lucas that hit that, excuse me, was his name, Nathan Luks that hit that, so a two-run home run in the top of the 11th inning gives the Blue Jays a seven-five victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. Meanwhile, we're monitoring the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks as they are scoreless in the top of the seventh inning. Brandon Fodd still out there, six and a third scoreless, only two hits allowed, two strikeouts and one walk. We do have under two and a half earned runs for Brandon Fodd. Let's see him get through this seventh inning, what is likely his final inning here in this scoreless game. Let's continue the football conversation though. We did a lot of NFL here on the program, and I wanna shift gears and get into a little bit of college football as we head on out to the Progressive Guest Line, and we are joined by Dave Bartoo, who is the co-founder of Matrix Analytical. You follow him on Twitter at CFBMatrix. Dave, thanks so much for giving us a couple minutes here on Live Bet Saturday. I saw one of your posts last week, and I was fascinated by this, and I wanted to bring you on to kind of expand on this. But you have some differing opinions or counter-arguments to the strength of schedule reports that come out. And for those around college football that analyze the strength of schedule and formulate opinions based on the strength of schedule, why don't you expand for our audience your opinions on some of these metrics that we see get thrown out there all the time. Like, oh, this Texas has this strength of schedule. Georgia has this strength of schedule.

**Dave Bartoo** (1:58)
How do you deal with all of that?

**Scott Seidenberg** (1:59)
And how do you analyze these numbers differently?

**Dave Bartoo** (2:02)
Well, I used to deal with it by just ignoring it because it's stupid, right? I mean, seriously, there is nothing that correlates strength of schedule with the quality of the opponent, right? I mean, Georgia could have played an entire, they could have played a max team every week for 12 weeks last year. Are they better or worse because of that strength of schedule?
Right?

**Scott Seidenberg** (2:28)
Yeah.

**Dave Bartoo** (2:28)
You know, look at the playoff last year. Now, strength of schedule, depending on how you define it, okay?
But if you look at ESPN, FPI, or most of the popular ones out there, the team with the better strength of schedule in the playoff last year was under 500 Didn't even win half the games, right? And so it always drove me nuts because I did the data. I'm like, this doesn't correlate to the best teams. It's just a beauty contest. It's putting lipstick on a pig, right? I mean, a team that has the toughest strength of schedule that's and 12 is still and 12 They still stink. Who cares, right? And then, then Sankey comes out, Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the SEC, and is like, all right, ESPN, FPI, preseason, preseason strength of schedule. Haven't played a damn game and we're already ranking strength of schedule. Yeah, right. You want to just talk about picking your spot out of thin air.

**Scott Seidenberg** (3:24)
Well, that's why I thought, Dave, that it's interesting to me when people talk about strength of schedule in college football, because one, everyone plays different schedules, right? So unless you're comparing just two teams from the same conference, and you're looking at an in-balance schedule within the conference, like in the SEC, Alabama doesn't play Georgia this year. Next year, they do play Georgia. Unless you're doing something like that, I don't buy into a lot of these numbers, and to me, everything changes on a week-to-week basis because of the actual performance on the field that season.

**Dave Bartoo** (3:59)
Exactly. And with strength of schedule, so few teams play each other. Now that the SEC is in nine conference games, we even have fewer non-conference crossovers. So how do you create a valid strength of schedule comparing 138 teams when they don't all play each other? You can't. It's easily manipulated. That's one of the things I hate about strength of schedule. Besides it not correlating to the quality of the team, it's also easily manipulated. I can make one, you can make one. You can say, Dave, make this team look better. No problem. And justify it. No problem. I can cheat on the data with strength of schedule.