Conference Strength Report: Week One

Picking up from last year, I decided to update the Conference Strength Report (CSR) to gauge conferences relative strength based upon on-the-field performance. This year, all DIA college teams and conferences are included (last year it was BCS + Notre Dame) and since the College Football News crew seems to be the most knowledgeable bunch covering the DI scene, an average of their team rankings is displayed for each conference using points in reverse order (i.e., the #1 ranked team gets 119 points and the #119 ranked team gets 1 point.)

For those of you who are new to this, the columns consist of the conference ranking as described above, the over all out-of-conference record, win %, the OOC record against DIA foes, win %, and the OOC record against BCS D1A foes, and win %. Frequently I’ll refer to the overall out of conference record as OOC, the DIA record as “no patsies” which excludes the non-DIA opponents, and “big boy” record accounting for only teams from the BCS conferences plus Notre Dame.

So, what can we learn from this data? If we ranked according to the CFN rating, the SEC, Big 12, and Big 10 are 1-2-3 in the rankings. That’s an interesting counter-balance to the traditional Coach and AP polls, but is still subjective even if well informed.

The overall OOC rankings show the Pac 10, SEC, and Big 12 tied for #1 each sporting an 83% win rate. But this includes records fattened by DIAA patsies. Even so, bringing up the bottom of the rankings are the Sunbelt Conference, followed by three conferences, the Big East, MAC, and Independents tied for next to last.

If we sort by the “no patsy” win rate excluding the DIAA teams, the top of the order is Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC in order and the bottom three include the Big East, Sunbelt, and Independents - none of the teams in these conferences won a single game against DIA competition in week one. The surprise in this is the Big East at 0-4.

Finally, the natural sort order shown above in the table is the “big boy” order showing only BCS level competition. The top three again are Pac 10, SEC, and Big 12. Based on all data sorts, I believe it clearly shows these conferences in the top 3 based upon on the field performance. At the other end of the scale, the Big East, Independents, and Sunbelt are clearly the three weakest conferences. Other surprises are in the middle of the rankings, how about the Mountain West? A 75% win rate against DI competition and 50% win rate against BCS teams. That’s a pretty strong showing which included a win over Michigan in Ann Arbor.

It’s early in the year so this is merely the first data point, but it does show relative conference strength and it’s clear that of the BCS conferences, the Big East, ACC, and Big 10 have some work to do. Meanwhile, the Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC have started out strong. I’ll update this every week there is substantial OOC action up to bowl season and then post-bowl, will post a final CSR report for the entire 2008 season.