Welcome back after a break. It’s good to be back. I didn’t take all of this time off, but rather spent a ton of time on analysis – certainly enough for 3-4 blogs already. Now that the season is over, I’m going to aim for a blog a week…UNLESS, I get a question in the comments. My commitment to you is that, assuming it’s a question or challenge that I can answer, that it will be, at minimum, one of the weekly blogs, possibly even a special edition.
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This week was always planned to be the conference ranking. My issue this year, after LSU’s run, and 6 teams in the top 18, and a 9-2 mark in the post-season is how to make this one interesting. I decided to look at this a few ways to see if they were as dominant as it seems. Here’s the table with all 25 conferences (including the 2 Independent groups).
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First, I looked at the average SOS score for each conference with the comparative ranking in parenthesis. The SOS score is not exactly this, but can be thought about as, the average opponent’s wins, adjusted. What that means is the average SEC game was against a 7 win opponent Power 5 opponent. Of course, there are adjustments such as home/away/neutral that impact that score, so if you take the average of all the games it won’t be 7.03, but it is indicative. The FCS schools were in the 1’s and 2′ showing a much easier schedule compared to FBS. Keep in mind that FCS/FCS games are equivalently difficult to G5/G5 and P5/P5 games. It’s the relativity that matters. In SOS, there is a distinct difference between the 3 groups.
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Another way to understand how conferences relate to each other is through non-conference (including post-season) games. The Patriot League was astounding 10-30 in games when one of them didn’t have to win. I repeat, 10-30. Holy Cross won the conference, winning the spot in the playoffs, which they lost, and remained the ONLY team in the conference to post a winning record. Here’s the trophy for futility. On the other hand, the Ivy League won 16 of their 24 non-conference games. Granted, they played Holy Cross and the other members of the Patriot a number of times (they played much tougher teams as well). But the fact is they had the 5th best overall winning percentage against others. That kind of stuff leads to 3 teams (Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton) in the top 79 (top 6 in the FCS). It would have been fun to watch them in the playoffs, but they elect not to participate. This measure is not one that follows leagues at all. The ACC dropped into 8th winning just 60% of the time (4-7 in bowl games did not help). The SEC topped the list again with 50 wins in 66 tries, including a 17-8 record against other Power 5 schools. Second place Big 10 was 8-10 against such opponents.
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Then I thought about looking at a couple of ways to see the middle of the conferences. There’s no doubt that Clemson, LSU, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Georgia, Oregon, etc. are great teams, but the true strength of a conference is in how deep it is. The first metric is average wins. This, sort of, lessens the top and bottom of a conference (since they wash each other out) and gets to a comparable metric across all leagues. Earlier I talked about the FCS vs FCS is equivalent. This metric ignores the inherent differences and just looks at wins – all wins. We see that FBS schools still stand out a little (because of FBS/FCS games throughout the season which are overwhelmingly won by the FBS) and that most FCS teams play 11 game schedules, but we see a little more parity. Ignore the Patriot League’s paltry 4.43 wins per and we see half of the leagues fall between 5.25 and 6 wins per team. 5 leagues averages 7 with the SEC taking the lead, again, at 7.64 wins per. When you think that Arkansas, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina had 10 among them, that’s a lot of wins (8.18 each) for the rest.
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The second median measure is part of the final metric set for this table. I’ve often posted best and worst – it’s interesting to me to see. Bu this time I added the median and ranked that as well. This pretty much follows the P5/G5/FCS divisions. The SEC West’s median team was Texas A&M (18). It’s hard to argue with the facts.
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So congratulations to the SEC, the Big Ten, and the Big 12 for their medal worthy seasons. I hope all of you enjoy digesting this data. Please send comments/questions/challenges and I’ll do the best I can. Thanks for reading and please share with others. G
Robert, I see the Power 5 conferences are the top 5 conferences. But were there any FCS conferences that broke the layer between FCS and Group of 5 (with the FBS independents)? (I don’t know which are which off the top of my head like you do.) Color coding the table would be cool. I wonder if there’s ever been a season where one of the G5 conferences surpassed a P5 conference.
The short answer is no but the MAC was historically bad this year while the Missouri Valley conference was pretty strong. I actually gained a great deal of respect for a few of the FCS schools this year, but it is unlikely the conferences are strong enough top to bottom to “pass” an FBS one. Add to that the App States, the Georgia Southerns, and the Libertys who, when they feel they are ready, promote themselves to FBS. This puts the FCS in a perpetual minor league situation, similar to MLS compared to the Premier League.