Week 8 College Football Conference Comparison

An update on the conference comparison from three weeks ago.

Looking at average ratings top to bottom, he SEC and Big-12 are far and away the leading conferences but it is closer than you might think.  The Pac-12 is a comfortable #3 with the B1G, ACC, and Big-East fairly close a few points back.

Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
1	SEC	80.234	97.853	64.506
2	Big-12	79.282	92.154	64.020
3	Pac-12	75.247	91.302	62.385
4	Big-Ten	72.985	86.890	57.200
5	ACC	72.135	86.109	60.030
6	Big-East	71.535	75.348	65.476
7	Independent	69.271	79.029	59.640
8	Mountain-West	66.912	90.993	52.022
9	WAC	66.270	74.227	58.429
10	C-USA	64.897	76.675	51.299
11	MAC	64.391	78.532	52.299
12	Sun-Belt	57.068	68.037	45.816

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
Rank	Team	Rating	Record	Schedule	Change
1	Big-12	77.469	27-3	64.798
2	SEC	77.353	31-4	64.007
3	ACC	71.800	29-11	63.474
4	Big-Ten	71.721	34-13	63.875
5	Big-East	71.631	25-13	65.930
6	Pac-12	71.436	21-12	66.184
7	Independent	69.373	14-15	68.415
8	C-USA	66.749	21-24	68.411
9	WAC	66.665	12-23	67.794
10	MAC	66.106	21-30	68.064
11	Mountain-West	64.208	19-18	65.979
12	Sun-Belt	62.605	11-20	69.640

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.