Greetings college football fans on the eve of the championship game of the oddest season in memory. Sometimes I am not very bright such as when I promised I would have a comparison of conferences for this crazy season. What was I thinking? The MAC played two games out of conference (both bowl games) while Conference USA played 43 and the Sun Belt had 35 (not to mention the Independents had all of theirs). The Pac 12 had 3, the Big 10 had 4, the SEC 8, while the ACC and Big 12 had 21 and 14, respectively. I thought about average rank (I have that table below too), but it doesn’t tell the story. The ACC had 2 playoff teams whose only pre-semis losses came to each other, but the conference lost 3 games to the Group of 5 and were winless in the only 6 versus the Power 5 (all bowl games). If we compare top to bottom, how do we avoid rewarding conferences which only had their best teams in bowls? I came up with a plan that I like so much, I’m using it going forward, I think. Before we get to that though, let’s look at a ranking comparison:
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This was my original approach – used in previous seasons. The table is sorted by average rank; the logic being that a conference that has the top 2 teams and everybody else is just awful aren’t indicative of that conference. The same thing applies to Top X teams. This year it’s even worse because in the shortened season (very short for some conferences) and limited non-conference exposure, we see normally silly things like 4 (four!) Big 10 teams in the bottom 44. Add Minnesota (100) to that and now we have Michigan (107), Rutgers (108), Illinois (114), and Purdue (106) all among the worst in the country. Were they top 25 material? No. Are they really that bad keeping in mind there were 128 FBS teams this year? Maybe. With just 6 or 7 games, it’s tricky. I wasn’t willing to bet the house on it. There had to be a more objective way during this season where we can’t compare non-conference schedules as a matter of course. I finally came up with a non-ranking-dependent method that I’m pretty excited about. I mentioned the MAC had 2 non-conference games. Both were bowl games against Group of 5 teams. And both were won by the Mighty Mac. They are the only undefeated conference in non-conference play. Does that make them the best? How does that compare to a 3-1 Big 10 team when all of the opponents were Power 5? What about an American conference who played 25 non-conference games winning 13 of them? What if I said 4 of those games were against FCS opponents and they were 1-4 against Power 5 teams – 0-6 against Top 25 teams – just 2-11 against FBS opponent’s with a winning record?
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So I came up with a numerical value: FBS teams are penalized for playing FCS teams (note: this is completely separate and not influenced by nor will influence SOS), with a major deduction for a loss and minor deduction for a win. FBS schools gain points for beating non-conference FBS, Top 25, and opponents with winning records (with a cumulative effect) and lose points in the same way. Conference games are ignored. The totals are summed and Bob’s your uncle, we have a new metric. In this new approach, the MAC gained a bunch of points in its 2 games, but not enough to be the best. Deep conferences who played a lot of non-conference games get a boost, but weak teams lower the value. There is a limit to the number of points a single game can earn so conferences weren’t unduly rewarded for only playing bowl games. With all of that, here is the table.
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We see here that the…um, er…crappy performance by Conference USA solidifies it in being the worst conference in the league. 10 games vs FCS opponents and a dreadful loss (FIU lost to Jacksonville St – the only FBS loss to an FCS team this year), a whopping .250 winning percentage against fellow Group of 5 teams and they beat just one winning team (Marshall beat 9-3 App St in week 2). The worst Power 5 conference was a surprise ACC. What?!?!? Notre Dame and Clemson not to mention Miami FL? You must be insane. Debatable for sure, but hear me out. The ACC lost every non-conference Power 5 game they played – 0-6. All in bowl games. They were just 6-3 against the Group of 5 (two losses to Liberty and another to UCF). The 6 Power 5 losses were offset by 6 FCS wins (with a combined winning percentage of 4-20), so against the FBS they were just 6-9. All in all, not a very impressive season. Don’t get me wrong: schedules were changing weekly and teams were accepting bids from whomever they could get, but the name of the game is wins. Going 2-8 against non-conference teams with a winning record doesn’t seem that good. On the flip side, the SEC only played bowl games outside of the conference. The GCR predicted a losing record with only Texas A&M and Alabama picking up wins. They did, but so did 4 other teams. The conference was 6-2 against winning teams out of their own and 5-2 against the Top 25. The Big 12 was perfect in the post season, but struggled against the Sun Belt in September leading to a 4-3 Group of 5 record bringing them to a 3rd place finish.
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Here are the Independents for this year: UMASS who only played 4 games and were blown out of all of them (41-0 at Ga Southern, 51-10 at Marshall, 24-2 at FAU, and 45-0 at Liberty – opponents with a .698 (30-11) winning percentage). In “third place” 9-3 Army (32) who stayed with the Big 12’s West Virginia (30) losing by just 3. They also lost to 9-1 Cincinnati (14) and 6-6 Tulane (77). Next up is Liberty who gave Coastal Carolina (9) its only loss of the season. Liberty beat 2 ACC teams and came within a point at NC St (8-4, 24). Then there’s BYU who lost at Coastal and ended 11-1. Let me add that up for you: the four of them were a combined 30-9. 6 of those wins were against FCS opponents, and they were a respectable 2-3 vs the Power 5. They were, however, a whopping 22-6 vs the Group of 5 and 7-7 against teams with a winning record. They were 30-9 and the teams that beat them were 70-27 (.722). Even though they are not a conference and lost Norte Dame for this season (they are often propped up by the Irish), they win the certain to be coveted and valuable GCR conference of the year award.
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That’s it for today. Thank you for reading and I’ll be interested to hear/read comments about the approach. Look for the big game prediction tomorrow before kickoff. Until then, G
