The Conference Debate

As a fan and follower of the Southeastern Conference, I believe I watch the nation's best conference week after week. I've held this belief since my elementary school days, reflecting an obvious point in the debate for college football's best conference: where you live heavily influences your answer.

In college, the guys on my dorm hall were a mix of SEC and Big Ten/11 fans, with Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Mississippi State, LSU, Kentucky, Ohio State, Purdue, Michigan, and Indiana represented in some way or another. We gladly agreed that the Pac-10 and Big 12 sucked and little else.

With this year's college football season winding down, I decided to spend Sunday afternoon compiling information about the BCS conferences, as well as the Mountain West Conference since they have three teams ranked in the Top 25, including #4 TCU.

Looking at out-of-conference games, here are the records for the seven conferences, in order by number of wins:

1. SEC: 42-6
2. Big 12: 35-13
3. Big East: 32-8
4. Big Ten: 31-11
5. ACC: 30-18
6. Pac-10: 21-9
7. MWC: 21-15

Since the Pac-10 requires each of its teams to play the other, giving them nine conference games instead of the seven or eight like the other conferences, they only have a total of 30 out of conference games. Also, the Big East only has eight members, limiting them to seven conference games. Here are the ranking of the conferences by winning percentages:

1. SEC: 0.875
2. Big East: 0.800
3. Big Ten: 0.738
4. Big 12: 0.729
5. Pac-10: 0.700
6. ACC: 0.625
7. MWC: 0.583

By these numbers, it appears the SEC is on top, with the Bigs (East, Ten, and 12) following behind. However, having watched a lot of SEC football over the years, I know that they don't always schedule tough games, giving themselves a healthy portion of FCS schools to pad the win columns. Now, they're not the only ones who do this, so I broke down wins and losses against other BCS schools.

1. SEC: 10-4
2. Big East: 8-6
   
3. ACC: 8-9
4. Pac-10: 6-5
5. MWC: 5-9
6. Big 12: 4-7
7. Big Ten: 3-7

Though a 10-4 record is a strong showing, playing only 14 of 48 non-conference games against other BCS conferences is a shame, which propelled me to look at the percentages of games scheduled against other BCS schools.

1. MWC: 38.89%
2. Pac-10: 36.67%
3. ACC: 35.42%
4. Big East: 35.00%
5. SEC: 29.17%
6. Big Ten: 23.81%
   
7. Big 12: 22.92%

Of the BCS conferences, the Pac-10, ACC, and Big East do a better job than the others scheduling games against each other. The SEC could do a much better job, but the Big Ten and Big 12 are just atrocious. Combine these percentages with their non-conference BCS records and it looks like they're the bottomfeeders for the 2009 season.

These percentages, though, do not include games against Notre Dame. Since Notre Dame has the possibility for a BCS tie-in in the BCS contract, I also worked out the percentages if Notre Dame games were included:

1. Pac-10: 50.00%
2. Big East: 40.00%
3. MWC: 38.89%
4. ACC: 37.50%
5. Big Ten: 30.95%
6. SEC: 29.17%
7. Big 12: 22.92%

 With Notre Dame included, the Pac-10 schedules 50% of its non-conference games against legitimate competition (games versus MWC were not included in these percentages). Though I'm not a strong believer that Notre Dame is always legit competition, they do recruit nationally and have a certain rivalry factor with some of the schools it plays. Also, they have a national television contract, meaning they get most everybody's best shot.

As far as scheduling goes, based merely on playing other BCS schools, the Pac-10, Big East, ACC, and MWC are on the right track. I'd love to see more SEC vs Pac-10 games (only three this season), SEC vs Big 12 (only three this season), SEC vs Big East (only two this year), and some regular season SEC vs Big Ten games as well (none this year).

But scheduling doesn't give the full picture, in the same way that non-conference wins or percentage of wins doesn't provide the whole shebang. I looked through the wins and losses against other BCS conferences and found that a lot of those wins were against the lesser competition from those conferences. For example, the SEC has 10 wins against other BCS schools. They've got wins against Georgia Tech and Clemson (the ACC's two division winners) and West Virginia (3rd in the Big East), but that total also includes some mediocre and lowly teams, like Florida State (6-6), Arizona State (4-8), and Louisville (4-8).

So, I looked at wins and losses against the current BCS Top 25 (Week 13, 2009). Here's what was found, by number of wins:

1. ACC: 4-5 (W: Pitt, BYU, Nebraska, Stanford; L: TCU (2), Alabama, Florida, California)
2. SEC: 3-4 (W: Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, West Virginia; L: Ok St, Georgia Tech (2), Houston)
   
3. Pac-10: 2-4 (W: Utah, Ohio State; L: Boise St, Cincinnati, LSU, Iowa)
   
4. Big East: 1-3 (W: Oregon St; L: Miami, Penn State, Utah)
   
5. Big 12: 0-6 (L: Virginia Tech, Iowa, Houston (2), BYU, Miami)
   
6. Big Ten: 0-4 (L: USC, Oregon, California, Cincinnati)
   
7. MWC: 0-3 (L: Oregon, Texas, Oregon State)

Now, this list has varied week to week (at least in the Top 25) since the BCS rankings came out, meaning that it cannot be the sole determiner of the nation's top conference. It seems odd that no conference has a winning record against the Top 25. It should also be noted that the Big 12 was listed ahead of the Big Ten and MWC even though it has more losses; the fact that they played against more teams in the Top 25 counted more so than those that didn't.

The last measurement that I'll list concerns wins against FCS schools (formerly Division 1-AA). In my assessment, the fewer FCS schools on the schedule, the better. The shame list reads as such:

1. ACC: 12-2
2. SEC: 11-0
3. Big East: 10-0
   
4. Big 12: 9-0
5. Big Ten: 8-0
6. MWC: 6-0
7. Pac-10: 4-0

Thanks to Virginia and Duke, the ACC owns the only blemishes for BCS schools against FCS opponents. Good for the Pac-10 for only scheduling four games against a completely separate division. It seems ridiculous to me that FBS schools are allowed to schedule games against FCS schools. Shame on the ACC, SEC, Big East, Big 12, and Big Ten. Switching half of those games to games against each other would be a great start.

Taking all of this into account, I still think the SEC is this year's top conference. They have some improvements to make as far as their scheduling goes, needing to reduce the number of games against FCS opponents and increasing the number of games against other BCS teams, especially beyond the ACC. However, they keep winning, whether it is against inferior, superior, or equal competition.

This is how I see the conferences stacking up, by strength from top to bottom. It includes information from above, as well as some input from the BCS rankings.

1. SEC
2. Pac-10
3. ACC
4. Big East
5. Big Ten
6. Big 12
7. MWC