Bowl season has brought the usual head-to-head conference competitions in NCAA football, with the outcome of the “Best Conference” title coming down to the BCS Championship game.
There were 33 bowl games between December 20 and January 6 involving 11 different conferences. The ACC was invited to the most bowl games (10), followed closely by the SEC (8), the Big 12 (7), and the Big Ten (7) conferences. The best bowl game record was the PAC-10, which won all five of its bowl games, followed by the SEC at 5-2 and the Big 12 at 4-2. The SEC and Big 12 meet in the BCS National Championship game on Thursday. The decision on which is the best NCAA Division 1A conference in the nation comes down to the BCS championship game, and here’s why…
Although the ACC had the most bowl invites, they finished the bowl season with a sub-.500 performance winning only 4 of those 10 games. Additionally, they went 0-4 against the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10. The Pac-10 received 5 bowl invitations and won all five games. Those wins came against teams from the Big 12, Big East, ACC, Mountain West and Big Ten conferences. That’s a great record against strong conferences across the country. It would have been higher if the Pac-10 could have had one more appearance against an SEC school. But, given the fact that half the schools in the conference went to a bowl, he’s a big feather in the Pac-10 limit. (When will the Pac-10 pick up two more schools and start division play?)
The Big East, Conference USA, WAC and Mid-American conferences had 6 bowl bids with the best record between them shared by the Big East Conference and Conference USA each going 4-2 in bowl games. Of those 12 games, only two came against the conferences at the top of the bowl game win-loss pile (Pac-10, SEC and Big 12). Neither the WAC nor the MAC played any Pac-10, SEC, or Big 12 school. The WAC went 2-4 in bowl games, and the MAC went 0-6 against conferences that didn’t finish in the top 5 in terms of bowl wins.
Not to mention the Big Ten, they went 1-6 in their bowl games. But in their defense, they played 6 of their 7 bowl games against the SEC, Big 12 and PAC-10. And his only win came against an SEC school.
To finish off the conference list, the Sun Belt Conference went 1-1 in bowl games. Mountain West went 3–2 in bowl games, which included a 1–1 record against the “Big 3” at the top of the bowl game win-loss pile. The Utes’ victory over the Crimson Tide was impressive!
Why is the title of “Best Conference” reduced to the BCS Championship game? Remember we are looking for:
* Conference that has the best overall strength
*Combined with best record against other conferences
Despite the Pac-10 having a 100% margin of victory in bowling competition, only 50% of the conference teams were bowl eligible. The Pac-10 should follow the lead of the SEC, ACC and Big 12 conferences by adding two more schools and breaking into division play. The reason? When you look at the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 conferences, all three had over 50% of their teams eligible to bowl!
That leaves us with the SEC and the Big 12 as the two conferences with the best overall intra-conference strength, combined with the best performance record against the other conferences. The SEC had 75% of its teams eligible for the bowl versus the Big 12 with 58%. That sounds like a huge disparity, but the numbers are SEC-8 teams versus Big 12-7 teams. Very close. In SEC vs Big 12 head-to-head competition, it’s SEC 1-0 against Big 12 during bowl season. So if Oklahoma beats Florida on Thursday, I’d consider the Big 12 the better conference. Their bowl records would be 1-1 head-to-head, but the Big 12 Champion would have beaten the SEC champion. If Florida beats Oklahoma, the SEC would clearly be the better conference, possessing the best percentage of teams going to the bowls of any conference (in-conference strength), and would be 2-0 in the bowls. against second best. conference (by conference strength), the big 12.
