STOP – This data has been updated for the entire season in this entry. Enjoy.
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Disclosure: I am an Ohio State fan and I have a Big 10 bias. I admit it up front, but, that being said, I’m attempting to be as objective as is possible in this post drawing conclusions based on data from performance on the field vs. media driven perception.
College football is one of the last great sports. You’ve got people who play for the love of the game, passionate fans, a limited season, and generally great product. It’s a team sport where the experts are frequently wrong when assessing any particular game (like Miami thumping Texas A&M last week) but are frequently right when looking at the bigger picture.
One of the great arguments in college football is which conference is strongest (and the converse, which is weakest.) Apologies to the other 900 teams out there, but when I talk about this subject, I’m talking about the conferences entitled to compete for the Division I-A mythical national championship each January, technically 119 teams, but practically it’s limited to the members of the 6 “power conferences” – ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and Pac 10 – and Notre Dame (though I don’t think Notre Dame is going to be in this discussion this particular year.)
Perception often is reality, so let’s just be plain here. Last season, Michigan and Ohio State, the two perennial Big 10 powers stunk it up in their bowl games. They didn’t just lose, they were rolled by better prepared and more focused adversaries on national tv in front of the biggest audiences of the year. On the basis of watching just those two games I can understand anyone saying “the Big 10 sucks” – frankly, in those two games, you get no argument from me or any other rational human being. But news flash, that was last season, and amounted to two games.
It’s a new season and the mantra now is that “Big 10 sucks”, the SEC is the “best” and the Big East and Pac 10 are ascending. That’s what seems to be the prevailing wisdom from fans and experts. So I decided to set aside the hyperbole and actually focus on data. Thus far, 80% of the non-conference schedule (excepting bowls) has been played. That means we now have a body of work on the field to be able to get a preliminary answer to the which conference is best question. Not that it can ever be answered definitively.
Let’s start with the presumed super conference, the SEC, [sarcasm]where the only good college football on the planet is played[/sarcasm]. Through the first four weeks of the season it’s clear through on-field performance that LSU is everything people predicted them to be. They’re 4-0 and haven’t really been tested, they destroyed an over-rated Virginia Tech team and easily handled at good defensive team in South Carolina. Defending national champion Florida has performed better than people expected, also sitting at 4-0, but coming within a whisker of losing to, Mississippi, that perennially feared juggernaut of college football. The biggest surprise is Kentucky at 4-0 (or Auburn at 2-2 or Arkansas at 1-2.) Overall, the conference is 32-14, a 69.6% winning rate. The out of conference record is 21-3, a 87.5% winning rate. Digging a little deeper, backing out the IAA teams the record drops to 15-3, a 83.33% winning rate. Now here’s where it gets interesting, when factoring only BCS competition, the SEC’s record is 4-3, 57.1% win rate.
Next up, the Big East. I have some degree of sympathy for the Big East after the ACC raid taking Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College. So in a certain sense, it’s nice to see some good football being played there. However, it is a basketball conference and the football games from top teams has looked like basketball on grass, not much defense with a couple of exceptions. West Virginia is living up to the hype thus far, Rutgers is a question mark, Cincinnati and South Florida have been pleasant surprises. Louisville and Syracuse, well, you just shake your head. Thus far, the conference is 23-7 with a 76.6% win rate. The out of conference record is 21-5, or a 80.7% win rate. Dropping out the IAA teams yields a 15-5 record and 75% win rate. When factoring only BCS competition, the record is 5-5, or a 50% win rate.
The Pac 10, like the Big East, I have some degee of sympathy for the conference. All the East Coast media bias, the lack of respect from other regions over decades does tend to grate. The Pac 10 plays good, hard-nosed football – most of the country doesn’t get to see it though, just the highlights. USC, Cal, and Oregon are all heavy-weights in this conference and are all playing well. Arizona State has been a pleasant surprise. Oregon State, not so pleasant. Thus far the conference has an overall record of 26-12 and a win rate of 68.4%. The non-conference record is 20-6 for a 76.9% win rate. Backing out the IAA teams, the record is 18-6 for a 75% win rate. When including only BCS competition, the record is 5-3 with a 62.5% win rate. For performance on the field, the Pac 10 has made a strong case for being considered the toughest conference.
Moving on to the Big 12, there hasn’t been much press on the conference other than Oklahoma tearing it up, Texas barely getting by, Nebraska’s self-destruction, and the tirade by Oklahoma State’s coach. The conference’s overall record is 35-12 for a 74.5% win rate. Its non-conference record is 34-11 for a win rate of 75.5%. Backing out the IAAs, the record is 29-10 for a win rate of 74.4%. And only factoring BCS competition, the record is 5-6, a win rate of 45.5%. The conference is getting the job done overall, but has been less than impressive against fellow big boys…
The ACC surely must bring something to the table, also a southern super conference. Miami must be holding up the standard, no, then it must be Virgina Tech. No, it’s Boston College and Clemson? Go figure. The conference’s overall record this season is 28-19, a win rate of 59.6%. The non-conference record is 19-10, a win rate of 65.5%. Backing out the IAA competition the record is 13-10 for a win rate of 56.5%. Factoring only BCS competition, the record is 3-6 for a win rate of 33.3%. The worst conference in football? Ahem, perhaps the ACC should be getting a little focus from the media.
Notre Dame, the one independent eligible for BCS play, is 0-4. That’s a 0% win rate. Say what you will about Ty Willingham, but at least he won some games in his third season. Charley Weis’ third year ND team is looking at an 0-8 start. Enough said.
Now that all the data on the other conferences has been displayed, we should look at the Big 10. Surely the Big 10 with all the negative publicity should be last in all of these categories. Well as a famous television announcer might say “not so fast my friend.” The whole conference has been a surprise this year. Indiana, Purdue, Michigan State, and Illinois have been pleasant surprises. Ohio State and Wisconsin have been mild surprises (good and bad respectively.) Michigan, Northwestern, Minnesota, and Iowa have stunk the joint up and are unpleasant surprises. The conference’s overall record is 32-12 with a 72.7% win rate. The non-conference record is 27-7 for a 79.4% win rate. Backing out the IAA teams, the record is 21-6 for a 77.7% win rate. And against BCS competition, the record is 5-4 for a 55.5% win rate.
This is a long article, so what does it all mean? Let’s do some ranking tables starting with:
- Big East – 76.6%
- Big 12 – 74.5%
- Big 10 – 72.7%
- SEC – 69.6%
- Pac 10 – 68.4%
- ACC – 59.6%
- Notre Dame – 0%
Obviously, I’ve made a mistake. The SEC and Pac 10 aren’t at the top. Funny what happens when performance on the field is actually taken into account. But this is not the only view, there are others we should consider. What about:
- SEC – 87.5%
- Big East – 80.7%
- Big 10 – 79.4%
- Pac 10 – 76.9%
- Big 12 – 75.5%
- ACC – 65.5%
- Notre Dame – 0%
That’s more like it, the SEC is on the top as the media say they should be. But look, the horrible, slow Big 10 conference isn’t last. Isn’t that interesting…Perhaps we should back out the patsies, those IAA schools and see what the ranking would look like?
- SEC – 83.3%
- Big 10 – 77.7%
- Big East – 75%
- Pac 10 – 75%
- Big 12 – 74.4%
- ACC – 56.5%
- Notre Dame – 0%
How can the Big 10 be #2, didn’t Michigan lose to Appalchian State? Yep. Still, the rest of the conference won the games that they should have. Perhaps there’s another outlier (besides Notre Dame that’s sticking out?) The most interesting ranking I think is:
- Pac 10 – 62.5%
- SEC – 57.1%
- Big 10 – 55.5%
- Big East – 50%
- Big 12 – 45.5%
- ACC – 33.3%
- Notre Dame – 0%
Against the big boys, the Pac 10 owns the best and the ACC has the worst record. That’s where you make your money on being the toughest, how does the conference perform against competition with equal access to talent, facilities, and coaching?
Now, I stated earlier in the article the prevailing sentiment from experts and fans seems to be: the “Big 10 sucksâ€, the SEC is the “bestâ€, and the Big East and Pac 10 are ascending.
The Big 10 Sucks. FALSE. The data does not support the hypothesis. That being said, it’s embarrassing to have losses to IAA teams and Duke…
The SEC is Best. FALSE. The SEC is having something of a down year.
The Pac 10 is ascending. TRUE. At this point in the season, the data suggests Pac 10 is the strongest conference.
The Big East is ascending. MAYBE TRUE. If by ascending one means the Big East is no longer the doormat of the power conferences, true. If by ascending one means the Big East is among the top 3 conferences, false.
As for the best conference right now, I’m going to say it’s the Pac 10 based on BCS win rate. The data speaks very strongly about which conference is the weakest right now, it’s the ACC by a mile. When one looks at the grouping of performance, really, the top conferences are all bunched tightly except for the ACC which is an outlier toward the bottom of the scale. With all the press and publicity, I would have believed that the Big 10 occupied that spot. While the Big 10 is not the first, it’s not the worst either. What the data suggests is that the current conference pecking order is: Pac 10, SEC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12, ACC, and Notre Dame. There is a huge gap between Notre Dame and respectability and a large gap between ACC and respectability. The other conferences are pretty tightly grouped in terms of performance on the field.
The point to this long post? When listening to the talking heads yammer on about this and that, don’t lose sight of what’s actually transpired on the field. The data often tells a different story than the perception molded by the media. I’d like to thank Yahoo Sports and The Colley Rankings for the raw data used in this analysis. Enjoy the rest of the season, we’ll revisit this issue after the bowls are complete.
October 30: The conference data has been updated in this entry. Tweet
The worst conference is the non-conference known as Division 1-FBS Independents.
Western Kentucky 3-1
Navy 2-2
Army 1-3
Notre Dame 0-4
37.5% win rate.
Personally, I am still trying to figure out how LSU was not elevated to the #1 ranking after the annihilation of West Virgina. They looked good. Like Florida in the BCS game last January.
Mark – fair, I did include ND in the analysis above as the only one of the independents that has ever participated in the BCS. But it’s true, as a group, they suck.
Well organized. Thanks for at least throwing this out there. Enjoy the “Ur rankings sux balls” comments from those who ignore numbers.
In 3 of the 4 categories above, the Big East is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd . . . but in the final tally they’re 4th? You should consider all the above categories and average them together, no? Otherwise, your conclusion is a little strange.
Just for the record….adding in the overall W/L rate may be the stupidest stat imaginable….conferences who have already played a number of league games (SEC) are punished because each game generates one win and one loss…..while conferences that havent played a lot of league games (aka the Big East) dont have that problem. Another example of why you dont let people who dont understand statistics near them.
“The Pac 10, like the Big East, I have some degee of sympathy for the conference. All the East Coast media bias, the lack of respect from other regions over decades does tend to grate.”
Lack of respect for the Pac 10? The one thing that matters has too much respect for the Pac 10…the freakin’ BCS!!
Why is USC at the top of the BCS ALL THE TIME for the past three/four years….with absolutely NO competition? SEC teams have BCS type competition EVERY WEEK, and thus, they take losses (and out of the BCS). The only reason they are not all in the BCS rankings is because they have to play other SEC teams….and get defeated by someone.
This case has been tried shut and closed for years….The SEC teams are so good that they beat each other out of the title games. Florida was lucky to even get in the title game last year.
Equally counting Iowa’s win over Syracuse and Tennessee’s loss against California is hardly a fair representation of each conference’s relative strength.
I think the Big 10 is held to a different standard than the Big East or even the Pac-10 (where it was pretty much USC and UCLA for a very long time).
That being said – One of your preseason favorites lost to a I-AA team (albeit, the best I-AA team), another struggled with a team that will likely finish around 6-5/7-4 in I-AA (Citadel vs. Wisconsin).
On the same day the Badgers had their lovely display – Northwestern loses to Duke, Florida Atlantic beats Minnesota, and Iowa loses to Iowa State (who lost to Northern Iowa). Yep, the Big 10 pretty much sucks.
Oh…and I’d put Notre Dame below several of the non-BCS conferences right now. CUSA and MWC have some decent teams this year…
The problem is that each conference has only faced 7 to 11 BCS opponents, on average less than one per team. It’s impossible to use that as a basis for comparisson, especially once you factor in game locations, if a good team was playing another conferences bottom feeder, etc. I find this whole argument pointless and stupid, at least at this point in the year. The best time to judge conference strength is after the bowl games when teams of relatively the same strength within conferences play each other on somewhat neutral fields. Even then the argument doesn’t always revolve around all the facts. Sure the Big 10’s top two teams layed eggs last year in the bowl games, but everyone seems to forget that the Big 10’s third and fourth best teams beat the third and fourth teams from “definitely the best conference in america” last year. Point is, that unless one conference has a far superior bowl year, anyone that says one conference is definitely the best, is full of crap.
SEC Fan
“When a good SEC team loses to another SEC team, it’s because the conference is so strong. And when a good Pac-10 team loses to another Pac-10 team, it’s because they weren’t as good as the media thought they were.”
Flawless logic.
What we are mainly looking at is BCS Conference Vs. BCS Conference and it’s an excellent comparison for the conferences.
Also, the Pac-10 is not just first in winning % this year, they are first overall in the BCS era. The SEC is hovering slightly above .500.
That’s not dominance.
Why didn’t you just say you were trying to prove the Big 10 isn’t as bad as everyone says it is? That seems to be the thrust of the article. Not that it’s a bad thing, just call it what it is. Also, your attempt “to be as objective as is possible” failed. Do you even know what that word means?
Why is USC at the top? Maybe because they won roughly 30 games in a row at one point – including bowl games? You say there is no competition – I guess that includes Auburn and Arkansas who they have beaten over the last five years.
USC beat Nebraska a few times, too. USC is always playing a pretty good non-conference schedule. The other teams in the Pac-10 are not patsies either. The SEC has Ole Miss, MSU, and other bottom feeders too.
Finally, you forget that USC was no.1 in both polls but was shut out of the BCS championship in 2003.
Donnie reads the entire article (allegedly) and basically comes up with “but these go up to eleven.”
I know, why don’t you guys just secede from the NCAA? You guys always seem to like that approach.
Another point…
The SEC plays the fewest number of BCS teams, 7, out of all of the conferences. The Big 12 plays 11 different BCS games – with the same number of conf members. Point being the SEC goes out of its way to not play good teams in the non-conf season, so they can have a lot of ranked teams that beat each other and make the winner look good doing it.
Untested argument, feel free to squash:
Last year, with the top 2 SEC teams winning BCS bowls easily (including a national championship), the number 3, 5, and 6 teams from the SEC played close games against the #2 teams from the Big Ten (Capitol One; Wisconsin 17 Arkansas 14), Big Twelve (Cotton; Auburn 17 Nebraska 14), and ACC (Chick-Fil-A; Georgia 31 Virginia Tech 24). (Tennessee was the #4 SEC team in terms of bowl payout/prestige and lost 20-10 to Penn State in the Outback Bowl). Georgia was the #6 SEC team (and lost to Kentucky and Vanderbilt for Herschel’s sake!), and still beat ACC #2 Virginia Tech. So here’s the question: if the SEC isn’t the perennially strongest conference, why do mid-level SEC teams always match up in bowls against the #2 teams from the other BCS conferences? It seems to me that only the Big Ten has any argument here.
The pac 10 never gets any respect,yet year after year they continue to have the toughest out of conference schedule and year after year they continue to dominate.The whiners from the sec continue to talk crap.I wish we could just play them all down the line and after we humilate them maybe then they’ll rememeber who is the conference of champions Biatches!!!! Oh yeah Usc has many more championships than anyone from the suck e c has ever had or could hope to have!
Pac 10 blows…I mean come on…and they are finally being exposed:
ASU at 6-0….are you serious? I applaud
UCLA at 4-2….one to Utah and one to ND, huuu?
Cal at 5-0…finally a decent team
USC at 4-1…to Stanford, really? Frauds
Oregon at 4-1…to Cal. Finally a tough team and they choke
Oregon St at 3-3…blows
Arizona at 2-4…another blow
Stanford at 2-3…and one of those was to the great fabled USC
Wash at 2-3….blows and still almost defeated the great USC…they would be 2-4 but they had a bye this week.
Wash St at 2-4…another sucky team
So far the Pac-10 hasn’t really impressed me. We can all roll on the Irish, yup, pretty bad year, I’ll be the first to agree. But they are 1 win away from tying 5 of the 10 teams in the Pac-10. All we all know when UCLA, USC, Cal and Oregon square off, we’re gonna have some more big losses…and after 40pt underdog Stanford one, anything can happen!
[…] I wrote about this subject earlier in the year and got some interesting responses, some rational, some not so much. But I guess it’s time for another try. The college football season is now 8 weeks old and we’re into the meat of conference play. That means the out of conference meetings are largely completed until bowl season, I’ll update this again after the bowls are completed. Now for a little commentary, the data has changed in the past few weeks and that has caused what was the weakest conference by far, the ACC, to close some ground and what was the strongest conference, the Pac 10, to lose some ground. Everyone else pretty much stayed even from the last update. Here we go, conference by conference in alphabetical order: Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) – Last time we checked, the ACC had an overall out-of-conference (OOC) win rate of 59.6%, backing out the IAA patsies (no-patsy) a win rate of 65.5%, and against DIA BCS teams (big boy), a 33.3% win rate. The conference has closed the gap over the past few weeks increasing the OOC win rate to 69.2%, the no-patsy win rate to 62.5%, and the big boy win rate to 46.7%. In short, the ACC has closed the gap with the other conferences and is no longer an outlier. […]
[…] to be a popular feature, so I’ll write a short update (here’s the initial entry on Which Conference is Weakest and the follow-up on Conference Strength.) The college football season has now completed its 9th […]
Why back out 1AA games? Because Michigan lost to one?
Should you mention that 3 of OSU’s wins are against Youngstown State(1AA), Akron(MAC), and Kent State(MAC).
The reason people bang on the Big 10(which for some reason no Big 10 fan seems to understand) is two-fold.
1. They play a cup cake of a non-conference schedule(See OSU)
2. All of the talk last year was about how the National Championship game should have been a re-do of the OSU-Michigan game. Then, a one-loss SEC school that barely squeeked by multiple teams(most notably South Carolina), took the best the Big Ten had to offer and made them look like the Sisters of the Poor.
I’ve got an idea, write the blog and do your statistical analysis after the bowl games again. As I recall the Big East went 5-0 last year. That should be the only real measurement of conference superiority. The conferences don’t actually pick their wins……but then again, a Big Ten school(Michigan)showed us all that if you’re a Big Ten school, you can actually lose to those teams when ranked in the top 5 and on your home field so you better pick wisely.
[…] Original Conference Strength Report: Through September 27, 2007 […]
[…] Original Conference Strength Report: Through September 27, 2007 […]
You list some stats to defend your positions. Then you list the Big East #1, #2, #3, & #4 in that order in your categories. And then you say that the Big East is not one of the top three conferences. (“If by ascending one means the Big East is among the top 3 conferences, false.”) Are you arguing against your own statistics?
[…] – Conference Strength Report – A look at the on-field data for BCS conferences about which football conference is strongest (and […]
SEC having a down year? LOL!!!
[…] I wrote about this subject earlier in the year and got some interesting responses, some rational, some not so much. But I guess it’s time for another try. The college football season is now 8 weeks old and we’re into the meat of conference play. That means the out of conference meetings are largely completed until bowl season, I’ll update this again after the bowls are completed. Now for a little commentary, the data has changed in the past few weeks and that has caused what was the weakest conference by far, the ACC, to close some ground and what was the strongest conference, the Pac 10, to lose some ground. Everyone else pretty much stayed even from the last update. Here we go, conference by conference in alphabetical order: Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) – Last time we checked, the ACC had an overall out-of-conference (OOC) win rate of 59.6%, backing out the IAA patsies (no-patsy) a win rate of 65.5%, and against DIA BCS teams (big boy), a 33.3% win rate. The conference has closed the gap over the past few weeks increasing the OOC win rate to 69.2%, the no-patsy win rate to 62.5%, and the big boy win rate to 46.7%. In short, the ACC has closed the gap with the other conferences and is no longer an outlier. […]
[…] Original Conference Strength Report: Through September 27, 2007 Bookmark It Hide Sites $$(‘div.d698’).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(‘slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) }); […]
[…] Original Conference Strength Report: Through September 27, 2007 Bookmark It Hide Sites $$(‘div.d734’).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(‘slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) }); […]
[…] Original Conference Strength Report: Through September 27, 2007 Bookmark It Hide Sites $$(‘div.d753’).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(‘slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) }); […]
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