Let's See How the Conferences Did Against Each Other

Two Years ago, I made the case that Virginia Tech and Cincinnati potentially could have been considered for the National Title game because they came out of a very competitive ACC and Big East, two conferences that fared extremely well against their BCS opponents. Putting together those stats got me wondering, so since I'm pretty much the stats guy on this site, let's take a look at the expanded out-of-conference records for all 11 D-1A conferences in the 2010 season. Well here it is. Click on the table below to view it full size. I don't know how else to embed a big table in blogger.

So let's take a look at the table and see if we can make any observations.

- First the ground rules. This table shows each conference's record vs. every other conference, plus the conferences record against all of D-1AA (screw this FBS/FCS naming thing). The "Indies" are Army, Navy, and Notre Dame, who make up a fictional 3 team conference. Post conferences, the grand totals show each conference's non-conference record, record vs. D-1A only, and record vs BCS conference teams only (The 6 AQ conferences and Notre Dame). Boxes that are grayed out means the 2 conferences did not play all season.

- The two undefeated conference champions playing in the BCS championship game come from the best (PAC-10 at 10-5) and 3rd best (SEC at 10-6) conferences against BCS opponents from outside the conference. Maybe the BCS got it right after all. Only 1 PAC-10/SEC game was played all year, and it was won by the PAC-10 when Oregon stomped Tennessee.

- In contrast, TCU's Mountain West was 7th out of 12 against the BCS, only going 5-10, finishing behind the Indies and WAC (the MWC also was only 4-8 against the WAC this year, but they are getting the top 4 WAC teams in the next 2 years. If you can't beat them, join them), but the MWC did better against the BCS than BCS conferences ACC and Big East

- The Big East was only 3-12 against BCS teams. Awful

- Despite going 10-5 against the BCS, the PAC-10 only finished 14-10 vs. D-1A, so that means they were only 4-5 against C-USA, MAC, WAC, and MWC (they didn't play the Sun Belt)

- Thanks largely to 19 total games vs. the Sun Belt and D-1AA, the SEC finished the season with the best record vs. D-1A and total non-conference. They victimized the Sun Belt a perfect 8 times and went 10-1 against D-1AA.

- The only conference to beat up on D-1AA more than the SEC was the ACC, who went 12-1 against them. That helped get them an impressive 30-18 non-conference record, but they were only 18-17 against D-1A and 6-13 against the BCS.

- The MAC mostly exists to get big paydays for playing at Big Ten teams early in the season, so not surprisingly this was the most common conference vs. conference matchup in 2010, with the Big Ten winning 11 of 13 games. The above mentioned MWC vs. WAC was 2nd with 12 games.

- D-1AA teams managed to beat D-1A teams 7 times this season in 90 games played. Not bad for them. The only conference to lose more than once to a D-1AA team was the MAC. D-1AA managed to get 1 win over 4 of the 6 BCS conferences.

- I think everyone will admit that the WAC and MWC are downright competitive, and college football (at least until things get shaken up) really have 8 "power" conferences, with the Big East probably being the worst of those 8. However 3 conferences actually were worse than the Big East this year.....

- C-USA was a somewhat respectable 14-28 against the rest of D-1A this year, and were 5-22 against the BCS, which is pretty much expected for a lower level conference. They have to be pretty proud of Tulsa's win over Notre Dame, though.

- The MAC was a downright awful 7-35 against D-1A and 3-25 against the BCS. (Toledo over Purdue, Northern Illinois over Minnesota, Temple over Big East Champion UCONN)

- The Sun Belt being in D-1A is pretty much a joke. They went 0-26 this year against the BCS (including 8 losses to the SEC, who would miss them if they moved down) and were only 2-32 vs. all of D-1A (Troy over Bowling Green and FAU over UAB). Surprisingly, they only decided to play D-1AA twice, and won both of those games.

- I think that sums it up. Check out the table and feel free to put your conclusions in the comments.

Kiss my ass Georgia

With the end of the season upon us, there is still some sort of "controversy" over who should be number one. If people said that USC should be number one, I would say OK. But that's not the case. All the controversy surrounds the Georgia Bulldogs. Yes, they absolutely destroyed Hawaii. However, USC did the same to a major conference opponent and had one fewer loss. And Georgia didn't even win their division in their own conference.
The SEC has many faults, most of it stemming from their arrogance and refusal to play a challenging non-conference schedule, but they do get points for having such regimented organization. They have a solid method for choosing a conference champion (picking the two teams (one from each division) that had the best records and having them play head to head in a title game), that is the simplest, most rudimentary tournament out there. Yet people still can't accept that Georgia didn't belong in the national title picture even though they didn't belong in their conference title game. This completely proves and at the same time refutes my complaint that a tournament is completely arbitrary. How could you POSSIBLY argue that Georgia belonged in a tournament any smaller than 32 teams when they were at best third in their own conference? But since people seem to want to crown Georgia, it's clear that people want a tournament for the sake of a tournament rather than for fairness' sake.
I'll still listen to arguments, but anyone who promotes tournaments and Georgia as a national champion has lost all privileges. I'm looking at you, Dan Shanoff. (Way to essentially call Deadspin commenters retarded, too. Ass.)

The SEC is a little too full of themselves

I have a buddy, Marcus, who is originally from Atlanta and is consequently a huge Georgia fan. We got into a little argument in which he loudly argued that the SEC is much, much better than the Big Ten. Every time I would offer a counter argument, like last year the Big Ten won two out of the three Bowl games the teams played in or the fact that the Big Ten has now won the past 4 Capital One Bowls, Marcus would have a loud if poorly laid out excuse, like Auburn really didn't want to play in the Capital One Bowl after going undefeated the previous year. And when I would mention how Georgia didn't deserve a shot at the national title because they lost to Tennessee, who in turn lost to LSU, his response was "But it's Tennessee" like that's supposed to mean something. And then there was this exhortation from an Alabama fan on Loser With Socks. Frankly, I'm sick of everyone telling us how dominant the SEC is every year. It's just not true. I'll prove it here in a second, but just know, SEC fans, if you are reading this, I understand that you think logical arguments are an affront to your sensibilities, but I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to reassure my fellow non-SEC fans that our conferences can share a football field with yours. I'm not going to win you over, I'm sure, so feel free to stop reading here and enjoy that new fangled indoor toilet of yours, or whatever it is you do for fun down there.
First, lets make one thing very clear. We're looking at the quality of the overall conference, not the individual teams. Clearly, last year at the top, Florida was better than Ohio State. That doesn't reflect upon the rest of the conference. Let's look more recently, at the BCS. Of the 4 major conferences (The ACC and Big East are too fluid to accurately use them in this little study) the SEC has the highest winning percentage. That's great for them, but again doesn't reflect their strength of conference top to bottom which is key. What is more indicative is that of those 4 conferences, the SEC has had the fewest number of individual teams play in BCS games, with 6, meaning half of their conference hasn't played in one of these all important games. The Pac 10, Big 10 and Big 12 have all seen 7 teams. Notable, of course, is the fact that only the Big 12 is as large as the SEC, meaning all three other conferences have had more than half of their teams make a BCS bowl game. While, yes, the best teams in the SEC are arguably the best in the country, the lack of any other teams elevating their game suggests a lack of competitiveness found in other conferences.
Enough about all that, however. The SEC fans like to talk about the tradition in their conference. Basically, they enjoy living in the past. The Alabama fan linked to above mentioned the Tide's 12 National Titles (of which 2 were not actually awarded to Alabama) which means they go all the way back to 1925 to count their Championships. I did so too, even though it's hard to leave out those dynamic turn of the century Michigan teams and compared the 4 major conferences. The end result? The SEC has had 17 national champions crowned. Not bad. They beat the Pac 10, who has only seen 14 champions. They did not, however, nose out the Big 12 (18) or the Big 10 (21). In fact, of the teams that did not make a BCS game from the Big 10, 2 had previously won national championships (Minnesota and Michigan State).
My point is this, without even going into Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, or talking about the conference's incredibly awful non-conference schedule, the SEC is vastly overrated. The Big Ten (as well as the Pac 10 and Big 12) are at the VERY LEAST on par with the SEC, if not better, top to bottom. Again, the SEC continues to put forth the very best teams, but the rest of the conference is crap. The Big Ten has more schools, top to bottom, that are higher quality programs, more greatly steeped in tradition.

And for the record, in the past 20 years, Colorado has been far more relevant than Alabama.