Ranking the Conferences

TSF is just a short ways away from publishing our final rankings for the 2010-2011 season. But before we get to that, I'm going to post a ranking of all the conferences that had some presence in the Top 25 season. For the purposes of this article, let's just call those conferences the Top-25'ers. Before I get into the messy business of ranking them, I have to explain that this makes for no exact science, and I need to give the background to the methodology I applied. In no way can we make an apples-to-apples comparison, but hey...it's fun to try.

First, as you know, every Division I school plays some lower tier opponents to soften their out of conference schedule. Some teams play more of these games than others. And some conference schedules allow for more intra-conference play that others. As a result the number of inter-conference play between Top-25'ers varies between one another. This means Top-25 conference X may play 33 contests against other Top-25'ers while conference Y may only play 20. I've taken that into consideration as best I can.

To compile the raw data, since I don't have the fancy database search tools at my hands as do the broadcasters' announcers, I had to manually assemble this looking through each team's results. Full disclaimer, I may have one to two things wrong due to human error, but I did the best I could not to make any mistakes. So onto the methodology...each conference has a row of data including wins, losses, total inter-Top-25'er contests, and win percentage. I have compiled six sets of standings. The first two have the same data as one another, just sorted differently. They contain the standings for the Top-25'ers sorted by win percentages and the same sorted by number of inter-Top-25'er conference contests. The second set of two holds the same data, respectively, but for the bowl season only. And finally the last two standings consider the entire season, regular and bowl.

First, let's start with the regular season.



We can see that the Big 12 took on the most inter-Top-25'er contests, and on top of that they finished with the highest win percentage. Trailing by just a little in win percentage, the SEC places right behind the Big 12, but with considerably less games. The rest of the Top-25'ers play roughly the same amount of games as the SEC, so we probably don't need to lean on the sorted by numbers of inter-Top-25'er contests standings too much here. After the SEC, we see a gap between the 2nd and 3rd place conferences. The Big Ten and Pac 10 take the next spots in that order and with similar win percentages, followed by the WAC and MWC. The ACC trails them, and the Big East is hanging in the basement.

While the number of inter-Top-25'er games doesn't necessarily tell us which conferences are stronger than others, it does tell us which programs are trying to put together exiting and challenging schedules, which of course factors into individual team rankings. The Big 12 is clearly making the biggest effort.

Now, let's turn to the bowl season.



Here, the win percentages can't sand on their own. The WAC is first for crying out loud, and even worse the Big East ranks higher than the SEC! So for the bowl season, let's weigh how many teams actually competed in bowls. I think this strongly represents people's perceptions of how these conferences compare to one another, with the exception of the Big East. They almost certainly don't deserve a standing higher than the Pac 10. But the Pac 10's low number of bowl bids shows how top heavy and lopsided the conference is. Although this chart doesn't reflect every bowl bid for every conference (some played against non-Top-25'ers), it does for the Pac 10. If we throw in USC pretending their scandal didn't exist, that wold still only bring them to tied with the Big East. Our ACC did okay in this respect. This chart reflects the inter-Top-25er bowl play for the ACC, but the total number for the ACC is actually higher with 9 appearances.

And finally, let's look at the entire season.



I weight the standing here with the sorting by win percentages more heavily. Even though the number of inter-Top-25'er contests vary between 33 and 20, 20 is still a sizable enough sample set to gage a win percentage that indicates something significant. In that chart the Big 12 just barely edges out the SEC. The Big 12 did so well in the regular season, but they had a very mediocre performance in the bowl season, but they still managed to hang on to their narrow lead over the SEC. The SEC pretty much held on to where they were in terms of win percentage, with only small drop. The Big 10 however, performed abysmally during the bowl season in comparison to the hype we heard all season long about the strength of that conference, but fortunately for them, only weaker conferences trailed them and had too much ground to make up from the regular season to catch them. All of those conferences behind the Big Ten made up some ground, but nothing dramatic.

So there you have it. That's how the Top-25'ers stack up to one another. We could use this for speculation into seasons to come, but that has its limits with some of the movement of programs between the conferences in coming seasons. TCU heads to the Big East. Utah and Colorado head to the Pac 10, err Pac 12. Nebraska heads to the Big Ten with twelve teams, leaving the Big 12 with, umm, ten teams. And who would dare say that doesn't make sense? And the SEC has accepted the James Madison Dukes...PSYCH! Comparing the conferences always provides a good barometer for how teams earn their rankings in the BCS, the poll, and of course right here on TSF. As I said earlier, it's not an exact science. Somebody else running this exercise with his/her own method could produce different results, although I'd get a little suspicious if the Big East or the WAC wound up beating out the SEC. But nonetheless, I think the endeavor worthwhile for a little speculative fun.

Something that I didn't measure was a consideration of the number of games that ended with the difference of a single touchdown or less. My raw data includes that, so maybe there'll be a follow-up on that. The argument on that has some given and take. While you could say that a game that close could have gone either way, we could also say that it's the elite programs that finish strong in the close games, hence making them elite programs. So does winning by seven or less mean a weaker win or a stronger team? I think there's a case for both.

You can access the raw data here: 2010_conference_rankings.ods. You will need Open Office to view it. If you don't have that program, it's freely available for all the commonly used platforms: Open Office. (If you run Mac OS, Neo Office will also work if you don't want to run X: NeoOffice)

Looking onward to the 2011-12 season...LET'S GO HOKIES!

Game Review - vs. Virginia

With the Coastal title already locked down, the Virginia Tech Hokies hosted the Virginia Cavaliers for the annual Commonwealth Cup featuring the biggest in-state rivalry on Saturday. The game held no impact on the standings for the Maroon and Orange, but as the rivalry game all Virginians tune in to watch as they emerge from Turkey induced food comas, this game still holds the significance of rivalry bragging rights. A Coastal division title holds little significance to the circumstances of UVA alumni family members rubbing in a loss with such a differential between each respective team's records this season. And if you come from a Virginia family, it's pretty uncommon that you don't have family members from each of the two universities. But alas, our Hokies prevailed and we have yet another year to hold the shellacking over our Wahoo brethren's heads. Another thing at stake, the Hokies' streak with 10+ wins in a season stood as another factor in the game. Saturday's win solidifies the Hokies as the only team with a currently active streak with seasons of 10+ wins, a streak that goes seven seasons back. Lastly, this game also holds significance because it marks quarterback Tyrod Taylor's last game at Lane Stadium. I can speak for all Hokie fans in saying that we all wanted him to have a spectacular finish at Lane Stadium.

True to form with respect to the rest of the season, the Hokies opened up the game with a rather drab first quarter. They gained a total of 16 yards over two drives, both of which went three and out. The defense allowed 63 yards. Thanks to a Cavalier missed field goal, the first quarter came to a close without any points on the board for either team.

The offense came out swinging in the second quarter. They opened with an interception deep in UVA territory, and on the ensuing possession Ryan Williams ran a touchdown into the endzone to put the Hokies on top. Next, the Hokie defense held the Cavalier offense to a six play, 20 yard drive that ended with UVA head coach Mike London making the foolish call to go for it on fourth down. The next Virginia Tech possession resulted in a 20 yard pass to David Wilson (the 20 yards Wilson actually ran) for a touchdown. The subsequent Virginia drive went three and out, and the Hokies squeezed a field goal into the half with 22 seconds remaining. Going into halftime, the Hokies commanded the game with a 17-0 lead.

The second half opened with a 70 yard kickoff by Justin Myer that actually split the uprights, and five plays later, Virginia Tech had received a Virginia punt ready to begin their first drive of the second half. In two minutes they moved the ball 53 yards over six plays capping off the drive with a rushing touchdown by Ryan Williams. After another UVA punt, the Hokie offense marched the field 88 yards in 11 plays over six minutes capping off that drive with a Darren Evans rushing touchdown. At this point, each of the top three Hokie running backs had earned a touchdown.

Once the Hokie offense began running their second string players, Logan Thomas had entered the game for Tyrod Taylor. Taylor having made his last play in Lane Stadium exited the game after having minorly strained his shoulder but happy and in high spirits having left nothing on the field. But much to my disappointment, almost every remaining playcall was a running call where Thomas made a handoff. I say disappointing because this would have made for a great opportunity to give Thomas a chance to make some throws and for Hokie fans to get an idea of what to expect from the second stringer further down the line. Originally recruited as a tight end, Virginia Tech coaching took notice to his ability to throw the ball. The 6'6" quarterback towers over most of his peers, and I'd like to have seen a threw tosses from our potential starter at some point down the road.

Minor disappointments aside, Virginia Tech played a spectacular day against their arch rivals with the offense earning 182 yards of passing, 201 yards of rushing, and five touchdowns. The defense held the second best offense in the ACC to 291 yards and only seven points on the scoreboard.

NC State was mounting a miracle comeback against Maryland until a bad spot (from what I could see) resulted in a first down for Maryland that enabled them to run out the clock. It's also unfortunate that Maryland dropped their contest against Florida State. Ralph Friedgen has turned that program around in very short order and they are playing like a top 25 team. But now we look towards the ACC championship game in Charlotte, NC against Florida State. It's hard to know what to expect. They've got a new coach and a new outlook after defeating the Florida Gators.

LET'S GO HOKIES!