INTRODUCTION

If the SEC is not the best conference in college football than why do they keep winning the BCS National Championship?  Well, besides that the BCS is rigged and all.... The SEC is without a doubt the most hated conference in college football, they encompass as much sports hatred as The Yankees, The Lakers, The Cowboys or Manchester United.  Every consistently successful team that is hated outside of their relatively gynormous fanbase that ranges from t-shirt fans, bandwagon jumpers, wealthy box seat corporate types, to a large section of true fans.  (Let's not get unreasonably jealous here, these teams still have just as many or more hardcore fans as any other sporting club)  The SEC as one entity, is as polarizing in the college football fan world as much as any of those organizations are supported and loathed in their respective worlds.

There are numerous conspiracies by Big 10, 12 and Pac 10 fans why SEC schools are so successful: 

- They don't have academic standards

- They recruit faster players than every other conference and play a wide open, style of football which doesn't translate well to cold climates

- They control the BCS and the Military Industrial Complex

- They've developed a compound, or fluoride, several decades ago which was injected into the Florida water supply to produce super athletes who are susceptible to recruitment to good ol' boy coaches who prefer hip visors to traditional ball caps

- It is the only major conference filled exclusively with schools located in mainly warm weather climate, excellent for 18-year old testosterone fueled athletes bent on partying with scantily clad coeds year round

- The conference is run by more crooks than the other SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)

Needless to say, the SEC is beloved in less conspiracy filled circles including: south of the Mason Dixon line, west of Texarkana, the great state of Kentucky, the secret underground BCS lair, the Military Industrial Complex, and the National Sporting Press.  In these places there is no doubt who is king.  Just like on the evening of January 7. 


PERFECTING THE FORMULA

Last year we broke down the conferences based on some criteria we created whilst indulging in loud shouting matches featuring RBI Baseball and Jameson.  This year we've moved onto Maker's Mark and Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball, and the bourbon has given us some insight to a fatal mistake we made in last years tally: our calculation system which assigned each conference a rank 1-8.  The problem is that using a 1-8 rank didn't differentiate between conferences who were miles ahead of their closest competition or ahead by negligible margins in a category.  Because of that a conference may only gain a 1-2 point advantage despite a 40% difference in winning percentage or gain a 1-2 point advantage based on less than a 1% variation.  So we've decided to modify the calculations and eliminate the ranking system.   Instead we will add to total winning percentage in each category together.  In a category with no winning percentage, i.e. Road BCS Wins, we've decided to award 10 points per victory to the total tally.   As an additional benefit this new calculation method would be able to be applied to all other conferences at the top level of college football without impacting the rankings (unlike the previous system).

Last year we used the Meaningful Game Percentage.  However, because the MG% is more of a calculation of scheduling and not performance we've decided to eliminate it.  In it's stead we've added a minor variation, the Cheap Bowl Team Calculation; which subtracts the number of bowl teams a conference had whose cupcake opponents led to the extra victory needed for bowl eligibility, from the number of non-bowl teams who finished 1 game out of eligibility due to not scheduling Subdivision cupcakes.  Obviously this could end up positive or negative for that conference, and each team considered will be worth 10 points in either direction.  (For the record, this generally will only apply to 6-6 teams that went to bowls, and 5-7 teams who didn't)

Here are the categories we used plus Cheap Bowl Team Calc, the replacement for MG%:

Vs BCS- According to the NCAA the BCS conferences are the best in the nation. This statistic shows how each conference fares against what the BCS committee feels is the toughest non-conference competition there is.

W-L% vs D I- Excluding Sub-Division opponents, this is the total winning percentage of each conference during non-conference and bowl games.

Bowls-The winning percentage of each conference against the top teams in the nation during the post-season.

% of W's- This statistic shows what percentage of a conference's total victories came against the best teams in the nation, bowl teams.

Road BCS- Home field advantage plays a prominent role in college football. Especially in BCS conferences. This tells which conferences have the most victories in BCS opponents backyards.

Cheap Bowl Team Calc - subtracts the number of bowl teams a conference had whose cupcake opponents let to the extra victory needed for bowl eligibility, from the number of non-bowl teams who finished 1 game out of eligibility due to not scheduling Subdivision cupcakes

                  2008-09 TOP CONFERENCES IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

CONFERENCE	Vs BCS	W-L% vs D I	Bowls	% of W's	Road BCS	CBTC%	TOTAL
ACC	51.7	80.0	40.0	41.4	60	-20	253.1   #5
BIG 10	35.2	70.8	14.2	34.3	10	0	164.5   #7
BIG 12	50.0	91.3	57.1	47.6	20	0	266.0   #3
BIG EAST	50.0	80.9	60.0	36.3	10	0	237.2   #6
PAC-10	62.5	42.1	100.0	55.0	20	10	289.6   #1
SEC	52.3	88.4	75.0	44.1	20	0	279.8   #2
MOUNTAIN WEST	66.7	63.1	60.0	25.0	40	10	264.8   #4
WAC	29.4	41.1	20.0	10.3	30	0	130.8   #8

Not much changed from our calculations based on the ranking system for last year. The Pac-10 was still #1 and the SEC was still #2.  The Big 12 hopped into 3rd place, which is probably where they belonged considering the performance of Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech.  The Mountain West just barely falls behind at #4, and the ACC and Big East round out the top 6.  Overall we feel that this gives a better representation of each conferences performances in 2008-09. 


THE 2009-10 SEASON

We're pretty sure that Alabama was the best team this season, but which conference was the best?  Who led the pack?  Was there a non-BCS conference worthy of more respect?   Was there an underrated conference which caused a title contender to become over looked?  Here's the table for this season.  Remember the first four categories are winning percentages, the last two are bonus categories as explained above. 

             2009-10 TOP CONFERENCES IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

CONFERENCE	Vs BCS	W-L% vs D I	Bowls	% of W's	Road BCS	CBTC	TOTAL
ACC	45.8	58.8	42.8	47.0	30	-10	214.4   #6
BIG 10	44.4	79.2	57.1	30.5	20	-10	241.2   #3
BIG 12	44.4	75.9	50.0	33.3	10	0	213.6   #7
BIG EAST	50.0	100.0	66.7	43.2	40	0	299.9   #1
PAC-10	46.6	66.7	28.6	47.8	30	10	229.7   #4
SEC	65.2	91.7	60.0	36.2	30	0	283.1   #2
MOUNTAIN WEST	43.7	47.8	80.0	36.0	30	-10	227.5   #5
WAC	23.1	63.2	50.0	28.5	10	0	174.8   #8

Just like last year, there are some interesting questions raised by these formulas that need to be addressed.

- The Big East is #1?  Yes, at least for this year the landscape of college football constantly changes.  It was the biggest improvement of any conference in big time college football.  Looking at the standings and final rankings you can catch a glimpse of why.  The SEC had 2 of the top 3 teams in the nation and is the better conference over the last 2 seasons (more on that below), but 75% of the Big East finished with above a 61% winning percentage.  That's almost unheard of.  And leads to a great new recruiting slogan.  The Big East: 75% of the time it dominates over 61% of the time.

- The Mountain West was better than multiple BCS conferences again?  In fact the Mountain West could have been even better if it's non-bowl teams weren't generally atrocious.  Check out the standings and final rankings again.  TCU, Utah, and BYU helped the Mountain West put 3 teams in the top 18 of both polls.  (That's more than the Big 12, ACC, Big East, or Pac-10)

- How did the Big 12 go from #3 to #7 while the Big 10 from #7 to #3?  Look at last season's standings, and look at this year's.  They're almost a mirror image when you compare the Big 12 of 08-09 and Big 10 of 09-10.  Last year the Big 12 put 5 teams in the top 25, this season the Big 10 put 4 in the top 16.  The Big 12 of 2008-09 was probably stronger than the Big 10 of 2009-10.  But the Big 10 had a long way to climb up after an extraordinarily terrible season.

- How did the Big East go from #6 to #1 while the Pac-10 dropped from #1 to #4?  Short answer: no idea.  Long answer: last season the Pac-10 did three things well: won bowl games, beat BCS opponents, and got a higher percentage of their wins against bowl teams than other conferences.  This season they didn't stand out in any category.  Meanwhile the Big East paced the SEC and accomplished slightly more to stay ahead.

- Why is the SEC is #2 for the second straight year?  Because it means it's the best conference of the last two seasons.  Say what you will about the game of soccer, but one great thing the soccer community has given us is the coefficient system.  A ranking that rates individual leagues based on their performances against each other over the last 5 seasons.  Basically, what we're doing here, we just haven't averaged it out over 5 seasons.  But, we'll give it a try for the sake of argument and college football.  Just give us a couple weeks, that's a lot of data to write down.  If we did a shortened coefficient for the last two years it would look like this:

1. SEC            281.45
2. Big East     268.55
3. Pac-10       259.65
4. MWC          246.15
5. Big 12        239.80
6. ACC           233.75
7. Big 10        202.85
8. WAC           152.80

- Is the ACC the worst BCS conference of the last 2 seasons?  Nope, that's the Big 10.  Consult the table above.

- Did Cincinnati get screwed?  More than likely. They deserved a chance as much or more so than the Longhorns. Since they lost to Florida it doesn't seem as if they could have beaten Alabama.  But keep in mind, the Bearcats wouldn't have shut down as quickly as Texas if their number 1 QB went down.