Week 5 College Football Conference Comparison

Pat Forde wrote a column on the strength of the SEC West vs SEC East which begged for some analysis from the computer and by and large it backs Pat up.

First, let's look at just the average ratings for the conferences.

Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
1	SEC	76.599	95.634	59.832
2	Big-12	75.663	86.786	62.696
3	Pac-12	72.187	87.244	58.034
4	Big-Ten	72.122	94.927	55.073
5	Big-East	71.128	77.951	59.647
6	Independent	69.643	81.087	61.194
7	ACC	69.092	82.045	57.166
8	Mountain-West	66.828	89.054	49.049
9	WAC	63.508	72.076	57.740
10	MAC	62.567	73.427	48.076
11	C-USA	60.834	73.440	49.538
12	Sun-Belt	58.464	65.380	48.724

The SEC has a slim lead over the Big-12 with the Pac-12, Big-East, and Big-Ten in a group behind.  If we look at this same average for the SEC East and West we get:

Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
1	SEC West	79.641	95.634	64.702
2	SEC East	73.556	80.662	59.832

A pretty big gap, but even the SEC East would be slightly above the Pac-12/Big-Ten/Big-East.

Another way of looking at conference strengths is to look at performance in non-conference games.  But one can't just look at records as some schools/conferences play a lot of FCS/I-AA teams or even weak FBS/I-A teams.  A better way is to group the games played by a conference and run them through the computer's algorithm.  Doing this yields:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	Schedule	Change
1	Big-12	75.180	27-3	62.745
2	SEC	74.867	28-4	62.270
3	Big-East	70.684	23-11	63.453
4	Big-Ten	70.034	34-13	62.124
5	ACC	69.229	27-11	61.296
6	Independent	69.150	10-9	67.152
7	Pac-12	68.987	19-11	63.899
8	MAC	64.328	20-28	66.527
9	Mountain-West	64.303	18-13	63.141
10	WAC	63.991	9-21	66.711
11	C-USA	63.389	18-22	66.326
12	Sun-Belt	60.325	10-20	67.472
13	FCS/I-AA	55.135	6-83	70.896

Interestingly, the Big-12 comes out on top here narrowly over the SEC.  They have similar records and schedule strengths so it is very close.  They haven't gotten to these records playing the toughest schedules though as only the Big-Ten and ACC have weaker out of conference schedules.