There's absolutely zero doubt who has the easiest schedule in the SEC in 2024

It is not difficult at all to see that Texas has the easiest schedule in the SEC in 2024

There's been a lot of debate over who has the easiest schedule in the SEC in 2024 over these last few weeks. There have been a lot of names thrown around, with some even accusing Texas A&M football of benefiting from an easier slate than normal.

And while it is true that the Aggies don't have to deal with Alabama or Georgia this year—or, for that matter, Tennessee—there is no one (at least, no one who should be taken seriously) who can contend with a straight face that they have the conference's easiest slate.

There is, actually, a pretty straightforward answer to this question.

No, it's not Ole Miss, despite that pillow-soft non-conference schedule.

Neither is it Missouri, even though their out of conference games were possibly even easier than what Ole Miss dealt with.

The simple answer is the Texas Longhorns.

The Longhorns are dead-last in KFord's schedule difficulty metric, which is an all-in-one measure that uses each team's statistical profile to determine how many wins the no. 12 power-rated team would be expected to gain against a given schedule.

This is a smart way to measure schedule difficulty, as it includes factors like home vs. road and compares using a constant rather than random variables.

As you can see from the above chart, though the Longhorns are only 35th in the nation in schedule difficulty, that's good for the last spot in the SEC. Texas A&M football, for comparison, is 17th in the nation in schedule difficulty.

This has to do with a number of factors, in my mind. First, I think the shuffle of strength in the middle tier of the SEC—Kentucky looking awful and South Carolina formidable, for example—as well as Michigan's complete nosedive. The Wolverines were ranked when Texas played them, but they are more likely than not to finish 6-6.

Though the Longhorns do have two tough teams on the schedule in Georgia and Texas A&M, they didn't even have to play a road conference game until November—and that was against Vanderbilt. The Bulldogs are a tougher single team than many above the Longhorns in this ranking have played, but the sum of the rest of the schedule really bring them down.

Longhorn fans love to argue with numbers they don't like, so while I'd enjoy this being the end of this discourse, I'm sure it won't be. Regardless of their feelings, though, the numbers tell a pretty convincing story here.