If your criteria's toughest to go undefeated in, the SEC's the best conference and it's not even close to being close. If your criteria's toughest for an average BCS team to go .500 in, the Pac-Ten's probably tougher though. Wazzu's the only team in the entire conference that would be below average in the Big East or Big Ten.

No, even without a championship game I still think its the Pac because you have to play every team.

OMG, are you kidding me? The mileage that the Pac-Ten homers get out of that one extra game is incredible. I mean, it's one thing to say that Pac-Ten teams typically play the toughest schedule because they do, but it's obviously tougher to go undefeated in a conference with a championship game and when you're talking about the "strongest conference", obviously you're just talking about the strength of the teams and not what the schedules are like for conference play.

This is pretty much exactly it.

As of now, the Pac-10 teams are the best on average, and I would argue that 9 out of their 10 teams could be considered above average, and even Wazzu isn't a complete pancake like they were last year.

The SEC has two teams right now that are clearly better than anybody in the Pac-10, and then a few decent teams behind those, but the middle and bottom are weaker.

I 100% agree that the SEC is harder to go undefeated in, but that the Pac-10 would be harder for an average team to be > .500 in, that seems to be a very fair way to sum it up at this point.

Depending on how you want to define it, you can make a reasonable case for either conference as the "best" right now.

Big-12 is a clear third imo.


Also, pound for pound, the Big East is actually pretty good. Keep in mind, the Big-12 and SEC have 50% more teams than them, so it's hard for them to compete on an absolute basis. But, with Cuse and Louisville putting up some fight, and UConn continuing to grind out blue collar wins, there really aren't any terrible teams on the level of Iowa State/Kansas State/Duke/Virginia/Wazzu/etc.

both the pac-10 champ and the SEC champ will have played 9 conference opponents (obv SEC teams cannot play every other team given how many teams there are), but the SEC's last opponent (SEC champ) will be much harder than just an average conference opponent (imo).

edit- beaten to the post

Yeah, the conf. scheds just reenforce your point even more.

It's harder to go undefeated in the SEC because your 9th conference game is against a top team, instead of an average team.

But, it's much harder for every team other than the top one in the Pac-10, since they play 10 extra conference games instead of 10 cupcakes.

So again, harder for an average team to hit .500 in the Pac, harder to go undefeated in the SEC, etc.




The argument about the Pac-10's 9th game isn't that it makes the teams better, it's that it makes them LOOK worse than they really are, and causes the entire conference to be underrated. It's a perception thing, and not a 'how good' thing, which makes it not really relevant.

Why? In both conferences you have to play 9 in-conference games, and in the SEC the two teams you don't play are probably not going to be the teams that are toughest. (LSU/UGA '07 would be the exception.)

If you look at most historical records, the SECCG serves as the catch-all for an awesome match up that didn't take place during the regular season.

Also, while 95% of what GoldenBears posted has been right on the mark, I don't think we can really say that the Big XII is a "clear" #3 right now. Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech have all lost to mid-major opponents while no one's really recorded a big non-conference win. I'd say it's pretty much a dead heat for 3rd place between the Big XII and the ACC.

Maybe because that top 50 is rather meaningless.

Of the Big 12 we have:

Really good teams:
Texas

Good teams:
Oklahoma
Nebraska?

Decent teams:
Okie State
Kansas
Missouri?
Texas Tech?

Non-good teams:
Texas A&M (4-0, so they are top 50!)
Baylor
K-State
Iowa State
Colorado

A&M has a possibility of rising to decent, but I'm not convinced.

SEC:
Really Good Teams:
Florida
Alabama

Good Teams:
LSU
USCe?
Auburn?

Decent Teams:
Georgia
Kentucky
Tennessee
Arkansas?
Ole Miss

Non-good teams:
MSU
Vanderbilt


Even the bad teams in the SEC are not that awful. If you think 2 of Baylor, Texas A&M, Kansas State, Colorado, and Iowa State are in the top 50, I have a bridge to sell you. A lot of those teams have done a good job scheduling really crappy teams, which of course boosts them up in the rankings. They all are quite terrible, though, and its possible every one of them is worse than the worst SEC team. At the top of the conference, the SEC has a pretty significant edge as well.

I'd actually have it the other way around. If you are a top 5 team, playing Florida's conference schedule would be MUCH easier than playing the Pac-10. If you are a #25 team, you should be able to pick up 5 wins out of 9 games in the Pac-10 a pretty good amount of the time. If you are in the SEC, there are more games where you would be outmatched by a significant margin, and more games that you would have as a gimme (but not by much). I'm not sure I would expect a #25 team to come up with more wins in a SEC schedule than Pac-10 either, though. I'd have to run it to see for sure.

Bama's schedule:

Arkansas (10)
Kentucky (9)
Mississippi (8)
South Carolina (6)
Tennessee (7)
LSU (3)
Mississippi State (11)
Auburn (5)

If Georgia beats LSU they are the 3rd best team in the conference. I could be wildly wrong about this, but being able to avoid the two other best teams in the conference is just so huge. You'll face one of them in the championship but even being able to avoid a single top of the conference team has to count for a lot, on top of getting an extra game against freaking Chattanooga

Pac-10 should get more credit for their OOC games than their extra conference games IMO

That's because Florida doesn't have to play Florida, ldo.

We're not talking about if Cal has an easier time than Bama or w/e, we're talking about hypothetically replacing teams.

If you're Texas, would you rather replace, Stanford or would you rather replace LSU? Obv the former.

If you're Texas A&M, who would you rather replace? you'd rather play LSU's schedule than Stanford's.

sweet... conference arguments... how awesome

How many teams are in the top 50 is a ridiculous metric.

Based on this criteria if the ACC had spots 38-50 and the SEC had spots 1-10 the ACC is a better conference, because they have 12 teams in the top 50 and the SEC only has 10.

i agree i just don't think anyone can come up with anything better outside of a very subjective write up of you think is good-bad like tomcollins just did. sagarin's conference rankings have the pac10 > SEC right now but that's not the greatest metric either

Using a middle weighted average or even just an average doesn't seem like the best way to judge it.

They only have the Pac-Ten higher in the "weighted median" category which isn't what anyone thinks of as the proper way to rate a conference since if Florida had lost to Kentucky, it would be enough to make the SEC the "best" conference as the methodology makes Florida and USC irrelevant compared to teams like UCLA and Tennessee in deciding which is the better conference. When just averaging the teams, Sagarin also has the SEC better. It does reinforce the point though that the SEC's better at the top while the Pac-Ten's better in the middle.

The only people arguing this are using ridiculous arguments leaning heavily on the fact that Florida happened to miss Ole Miss and Alabama in the random draw of out-of-division scheduling while a lot of the average teams in the West had to play all the top teams.

Even if you take Florida in, just take Texas, and play all 12 SEC teams, and all 10 Pac-10 teams, I think they come up with a higher win % in the SEC.

If you take a team like Nebraska, and do the same, I think they come up with a higher win % in the Pac-10 (without running the numbers), but it would be interesting to see. This is just off the top of my head and I don't have any numbers to run it, and it's not exactly the easiest thing to do in your head.

I don't think its obvious Texas would want to play Stanfords. Even as a 70% favorite against each Pac-10 team (is that about accurate on average), they would have 8 games, they would only run the table 6% of the time.

If you think that Texas only beats the average Pac-Ten teams 70% of the time, what on earth makes you think Nebraska does any better? At least in the SEC, they get 3 relatively easy wins playing Mississippi State, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt.

Since I've gotten way too invested in this thread, here are some rough win probabilities for Texas if they somehow played every SEC and Pac-Ten team on a neutral field:

Pac-Ten
USC: 55%
Oregon: 60%
Cal: 70%
Stanford: 75%
UCLA: 75%
Arizona: 75%
Arizona State: 75%
Oregon State: 80%
Washington: 90%
Washington State: 100%

Average record: 7.55-2.45 (75.5%)


SEC
Florida: 30%
Alabama: 50%
LSU: 65%
Georgia: 65%
Mississippi: 65%
Auburn: 70%
Tennessee: 70%
South Carolina: 70%
Arkansas: 80%
Kentucky: 90%
Mississippi State: 90%
Vanderbilt: 95%

Average record: 8.5-3.5 (70.8%)

Taking the conference arguments in a different direction: I posit that the Sun Belt, de facto worst conference for years, has surpassed the MAC this season, and moved into second to last place. Agree or disagree?

MAC has actually done better this year than normal. Has the Sun Belt been a lot better than normal? Sun Belt actually has some decent teams, like Troy and La Tech, right?

Is Washington as bad as Kentucky and MSU, and worse than Arkansas? You think Tennessee has a better chance of winning than UCLA? I think with these numbers you have overrated the middle/bottom teams of the Pac-10 and underrated the bottom teams of the Pac-10.

Just this year? Previously Toledo had wins over Pitt and Michigan. I don't know the Mac history off the top of my head but between Toledo, BGSU, Ball St, and others they usually have a couple of good teams. Who sets the bar for the Sun Belt?