Winners, Losers and Treaders in the Football Conference Movement

Over the past few years one of the liveliest topics in college sports has been the ever-changing look of conferences.  It has long been commonplace for supporters of a conference to declare their conference the best.  I decided to take an in depth look at future football changes in the BCS conferences.  (At some point in the future I will look take an in depth look at the changes in college basketball).

                 

I recognize that any analysis of these changes is subjective (an opinion), however I tried to be as objective as a lifelong Syracuse and Big East (and, I guess, now future ACC) fan could be.  I tried to use as much data to come to my conclusion as possible.  I will explain the method of my madness later on.

               

So without further delay the conference that I believe made out the best with the latest round of conference switching is….wait for it…wait for it…the Big 12, followed by the SEC, ACC and Big East.

                

Since average college football fans put much more importance on the now rather than history I tried to do the same in my analysis.  The first thing I did was to compile the win-loss record of each of the ten teams moving among BCS conferences.  Here are some of the things I found interesting from this data:

• Boise St. has won the most games in the last ten years by a long shot.  They have won 118 the second most among the ten teams was TCU with 103.  West Virginia has won 95 and then there is another big drop off to Missouri with 81.
• SMU has won the least games, winning only 42.  Coming in just above SMU with 43 wins was Syracuse (very painful to see that in writing).
• Boise State has won 10 or more games in 9 of the last 10 seasons.

After compiling the year by year records of each team I looked at the bowl results for each team over the past ten years.  This also provided some interesting data:

•  Boise State and West Virginia have been to bowl games each of the last ten years.  TCU missed only once, in 2004. 
• Missouri has been to bowl games 8.
• TCU has a 7-2 record in bowl games.
• Boise State is 4-6.
• Texas A&M is 1-5 and Houston is 2-5.

 Since to many people all that matters is BCS bowls I also looked at those results among the ten teams:

• West Virginia, Pittsburgh, TCU and Boise State have all been to BCS games in last 10 years.
• West Virginia (3), Boise St. (2) and TCU (1) have all won a BCS bowl.

 From this data I created a formula to rank the teams from 1-10.  In addition to the data above I ranked the teams by strength of schedule and history.  Here are the rankings I compiled.  A team got 10 for being #1 in a category and 1 for being #10 in a category.  If there was a tie I divided the points and split them between the two teams:

	Team	Wins	Pct.	Bowls	Bowl Wins	BCS App.	Sch. Strength	History	TOTAL	New Conference
1	West Virginia	8	8	9	7.5	4	8	7	51.5	Big 12
2	Boise State	10	10	9	9	2.5	5	4	49.5	Big East
3	TCU	9	9	8	10	2.5	4	5	47.5	Big 12
4	Missouri	7	7	7	7.5	-	9	6	43.5	SEC
5	Pittsburgh	5	6	6	6	1	7	9	40	ACC
6	Texas A&M	4	4	4.5	2	-	10	10	34.5	SEC
7	Houston	6	5	4.5	4.5	-	3	3	26	Big East
8	Syracuse	2	2	1.5	2	-	6	8	21.5	ACC
9	SMU	1	1	3	4.5	-	2	2	13.5	Big East
10	San Diego St.	3	3	1.5	2	-	1	1	11.5	Big East

As you can see the two teams that are being added to the Big 12, West Virginia and TCU, come in at numbers one and three respectively in my power rankings.  The two teams they are replacing, Missouri and Texas A&M, come in at numbers four and six.  Additionally West Virginia and TCU have a combined four BCS bowl victories, while Texas A&M and Missouri do not even have a BCS appearance between them.

You could argue that West Virginia and TCU have been competing against weaker competition, which is probably true, but their on the field success cannot be ignored.  In most years I would put West Virginia up against Texas A&M and Missouri and think they would win more times than not.  (Unless of course the Mountaineers play like they did against my boys in orange this year).  I would not hesitate to put TCU up against those two teams either. 

I think that the SEC, Big East and ACC are treading water with their additions.  I don’t think Texas A&M and Missouri will be more than middle of the pack SEC teams most years.  Sure, some years they may have teams that compete near the top, but it I don’t think it will be on a consistent basis.  Essentially, I think money was the only reason the SEC added these two teams.  It allows the SEC to expand into a few new areas, but doesn’t add much to the on the field product.

                As, what I think is, an objective Big East fan I never held onto delusions of grandeur.  I knew the Big East was at the bottom of the BCS conferences in most years.  However, I also believe the ACC was right by us.  The ACC may have more late 1990’s brand awareness (FSU, Miami) than the Big East, but the on the field product is very similar.  The only difference is each year the pre-season pollsters and ESPN “experts” for some reason think that the ACC has a national title contender.  This year I think the Big East was probably better than the ACC, not just at the top as West Virginia proved against Clemson.

I don’t think the additions of Syracuse and Pittsburgh made the ACC weaker, since most years I don’t think these two teams will be at the bottom of the league.  Instead, I think two more teams have been added to the middle of the pack.

The Big East lost the most teams.  However, with the exception of West Virginia, I do not believe the teams will be tough to replace.  Syracuse and Pitt have been hovering around the middle and bottom of the Big East in recent history.  Just when they seem to have had a breakout season they fall back to reality.  The only thing that kept Syracuse (my team and alma mater) from coming in last in my power rankings was schedule strength and history. 

The additions to the Big East together equal out the losses in my mind.  In fact, if anything, the Big East has probably gotten stronger overall.  Boise State doesn’t have quite the track record of West Virginia, but in recent history they compare very well with the Mountaineers.  SMU, San Diego St. and Houston all should fit in nicely toward the bottom middle of the Big East pecking order, precisely where Pitt and Syracuse have been recently.

Many analysts and coaches have stated that football is driving these conference moves.  It is tough to argue that since football does bring the most revenue to these institutions.  However, if this is true, it is really just greed driving these moves, since only the Big 12 has, more than minutely, improved their on the field product.