How's your conference doing? Comparing the FBS conferences -- Week 4

by Truzenzuzex on Sep 27, 2008 11:23 AM EDT in Football Comment 0 comments

I missed this post last week due to the Ryder Cup and other obligations. It was a busy week, but things are finally evening out a bit.

What I do here is compare each conference's record against all BCS, FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known and Division 1A), and others. We hear a lot about inter-conference strenghts from proponents of every conference, and while this analysis is hardly a definitive argument for or against a conference, it does give us a directional idea of how the 12 FBS conferences are performing overall.

In the end, the debate about conference strength or weakness is largely academic, but it is fun and often full of nearly as much passion and pride as the individual teams. So with that said, here are the results as of today, and it does include the results from last night's games:

			FBS (including BCS)				BCS (Conferences)				Other
Rank	Conference	Last Rank	W	L	%	TTL FBS	W	L	%	TTL BCS	W	L	%	TTL Other	TTL Games	Remarks
1	SEC	2	18	4	.818	22	5	3	.625	8	7	0	1.000	7	29	Back on top
2	Big 12	1	23	8	.742	31	6	6	.500	12	8	0	1.000	8	39	Strong
2	Big Ten	2	23	8	.742	31	5	5	.500	10	10	0	1.000	10	41	Strong
4	Mountain West	5	13	5	.722	18	7	3	.700	10	5	1	0.833	6	24	Best against BCS
5	ACC	7	11	8	.579	19	6	6	.500	12	12	0	1.000	12	31	Improving
6	Big East	7	10	11	.476	21	5	6	.455	11	6	0	1.000	6	27	Hanging
7	Pac-10	4	10	12	.455	22	5	6	.455	11	2	0	1.000	2	24	Weakening further
8	WAC	12	7	14	.333	21	2	11	.154	13	6	0	1.000	6	27	Better than last
9	Independents (FBS)	10	3	7	.300	10	2	4	.333	6	3	1	0.750	4	14	Slightly better
10	Conference USA	6	7	19	.269	26	2	13	.133	15	6	0	1.000	6	32	Bottom fell out
11	Mid-American	11	8	24	.250	32	3	20	.130	23	7	0	1.000	7	39	As expected
12	Sun Belt	9	4	17	.190	21	2	13	.133	15	3	0	1.000	3	24	As expected

Notes:

Check out the Moutain West -- they are getting it done against the BCS, and they aren't even a BCS conference.
The ACC is improving -- a lot.
The Pac-10 is looking much weaker than expected, and has a losing BCS record.
The SEC sure hasn't played many BCS teams out of conference compared with everyone else. The only group with fewer are the FBS Independents, a tiny group of four teams including Western Kentucky, Notre Dame, Army and Navy.

Comment away.

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