Conference Rankings
There's not a clear-cut #1 conference (sorry, SEC truthers), but there are some pretty clear tiers this year. You can make a compelling case that the Pac 12 and SEC are the two best conferences, followed by the ACC and Big Ten (I'm as shocked as you are). I'm willfully ignoring anything labeled IND, since it's not really a conference, and with only 4 teams in that classification, the sample size is really too small to provide any meaningful statistical information either via mean or median. After that is the Big XII. Then a log jam of the AAC, CUSA, and MWC. Bringing up the rear is the MAC, and finally the lowly Sun Belt. I'm generally inclined to use the median as the prime indicator here (as opposed to the mean) since it's less prone to being skewed by outliers. And if you put a gun to my head and asked me to choose a "best" conference, I'd say Pac 12 for the following reasons: better median than SEC, better best team (Oregon vs Alabama), better worst team (Colorado vs Vanderbilt), and a winning record against every other conference they played (the SEC had a losing record vs the ACC and only hit .500 against the Big Ten).
For 3rd place, the ACC's composite score edge over the Big Ten is so marginal, you could point at the 1-5 record and the fact that Ohio State is the national champion and convince me that the Big Ten is better than the ACC pretty easily. I wouldn't argue that the top 25% of the Big Ten is likely better than the top of the ACC, but the higher median tells us that the middle of the pack teams in the ACC are better, but again, we're really splitting hairs at this point.
Meanwhile, woe is the Big XII, who managed the strange feat of placing 2 teams in the top 10, but whose 3rd and 4th best teams are #26 Kansas State and #40 Oklahoma (compared to the Big Ten with 3 in the top 13, 4 in the top 30, the SEC with 4 in the top 16, 5 in the top 21, the ACC's 3 of the top 12 and 5 of the top 33, or the Pac 12's 5 in the top 24 and 7 in the top 39). Hell, the Mountain West has 3 teams ranked ahead of Kansas State and 4 ahead of Oklahoma. I'm not saying Boise would beat TCU (but it's happened before when no one thought they had a chance (2010)), or Utah State could beat Oklahoma, but I do think it's interesting that not a single Big XII school put a MWC team on their calendar this year...
For 3rd place, the ACC's composite score edge over the Big Ten is so marginal, you could point at the 1-5 record and the fact that Ohio State is the national champion and convince me that the Big Ten is better than the ACC pretty easily. I wouldn't argue that the top 25% of the Big Ten is likely better than the top of the ACC, but the higher median tells us that the middle of the pack teams in the ACC are better, but again, we're really splitting hairs at this point.
Meanwhile, woe is the Big XII, who managed the strange feat of placing 2 teams in the top 10, but whose 3rd and 4th best teams are #26 Kansas State and #40 Oklahoma (compared to the Big Ten with 3 in the top 13, 4 in the top 30, the SEC with 4 in the top 16, 5 in the top 21, the ACC's 3 of the top 12 and 5 of the top 33, or the Pac 12's 5 in the top 24 and 7 in the top 39). Hell, the Mountain West has 3 teams ranked ahead of Kansas State and 4 ahead of Oklahoma. I'm not saying Boise would beat TCU (but it's happened before when no one thought they had a chance (2010)), or Utah State could beat Oklahoma, but I do think it's interesting that not a single Big XII school put a MWC team on their calendar this year...
| Conference | Median Score (Rank) | Average Score (Rank) |
| Pac 12 | 0.652119 (1) | 0.588608 (2) |
| SEC | 0.630495 (2) | 0.627829 (1) |
| IND | 0.591702 (3) | 0.525419 (6) |
| ACC | 0.543368 (4) | 0.562945 (3) |
| Big Ten | 0.526238 (5) | 0.562817 (4) |
| Big XII | 0.501173 (6) | 0.534019 (5) |
| AAC | 0.485584 (7) | 0.423851 (9) |
| CUSA | 0.464364 (8) | 0.473289 (8) |
| MWC | 0.448798 (9) | 0.474476 (7) |
| MAC | 0.428382 (10) | 0.415714 (10) |
| Sun Belt | 0.415123 (11) | 0.393096 (11) |
| AAC | ACC | Big Ten | Big XII | CUSA | IND | MAC | MWC | Pac 12 | SEC | Sun Belt | |
| AAC vs. | -- | 0.333 (3-6) | 0.000 (0-6) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.250 (1-3) | 0.333 (2-4) | 1.000 (2-0) | 0.333 (1-2) | 0.000 (0-1) | 0.167 (1-5) | 0.000 (0-1) |
| ACC vs. | 0.667 (6-3) | -- | 0.167 (1-5) | 1.000 (3-0) | 1.000 (3-0) | 0.500 (3-3) | 0.800 (4-1) | 0.333 (1-2) | 0.250 (1-3) | 0.625 (5-3) | 0.833 (5-1) |
| Big Ten vs. | 1.000 (6-0) | 0.833 (5-1) | -- | 0.250 (1-3) | 0.800 (4-1) | 0.600 (3-2) | 0.727 (8-3) | 1.000 (3-0) | 0.250 (2-6) | 0.500 (3-3) | 1.000 (2-0) |
| Big XII vs. | 1.000 (3-0) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.750 (3-1) | -- | 1.000 (5-0) | 0.000 (0-1) | 1.000 (3-0) | -- | 0.333 (1-2) | 0.286 (2-5) | -- |
| CUSA vs. | 0.750 (3-1) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.200 (1-4) | 0.000 (0-5) | -- | 0.600 (3-2) | 1.000 (7-0) | 0.500 (3-3) | 0.000 (0-1) | 0.000 (0-8) | 1.000 (4-0) |
| IND vs. | 0.667 (4-2) | 0.500 (3-3) | 0.400 (2-3) | 1.000 (1-0) | 0.400 (2-3) | -- | 0.667 (2-1) | 0.375 (3-5) | 0.400 (2-3) | 1.000 (1-0) | 1.000 (3-0) |
| MAC vs. | 0.000 (0-2) | 0.200 (1-4) | 0.273 (3-8) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.000 (0-7) | 0.333 (1-2) | -- | 0.500 (1-1) | 0.000 (0-1) | 0.000 (0-5) | 0.800 (4-1) |
| MWC vs. | 0.667 (2-1) | 0.667 (2-1) | 0.000 (0-3) | -- | 0.500 (3-3) | 0.625 (5-3) | 0.500 (1-1) | -- | 0.214 (3-11) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.667 (4-2) |
| Pac 12 vs. | 1.000 (1-0) | 0.750 (3-1) | 0.750 (6-2) | 0.667 (2-1) | 1.000 (1-0) | 0.600 (3-2) | 1.000 (1-0) | 0.786 (11-3) | -- | -- | 1.000 (1-0) |
| SEC vs. | 0.833 (5-1) | 0.375 (3-5) | 0.500 (3-3) | 0.714 (5-2) | 1.000 (8-0) | 0.000 (0-1) | 1.000 (5-0) | 1.000 (3-0) | -- | -- | 1.000 (9-0) |
| Sun Belt vs. | 1.000 (1-0) | 0.167 (1-5) | 0.000 (0-2) | -- | 0.000 (0-4) | 0.000 (0-3) | 0.200 (1-4) | 0.333 (2-4) | 0.000 (0-1) | 0.000 (0-9) | -- |
posted by Rev. Adam at
4:54 PM
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