Lightsheaber's 2009 Conference Breakdown

In my Conference Breakdown Segment, I will rank conferences using a weighted average, where the conference's best teams count slightly more toward overall rank, but not so much so to offset having extremely poor teams at the bottom. In my weekly column during the season, I will look at the major conference games of the last week and give my thoughts on the games of the next week.

The 2009-10 Conference Rankings:

1	SEC	0.5700
2	BIG 12	0.5671
3	BIG TEN	0.5668
4	ACC	0.5610
5	BIG EAST	0.5584
6	PAC-10	0.5528
7	MTN WEST	0.5523
8	WAC	0.5428
9	C-USA	0.5420
10	MAC	0.5233
11	SUN BELT	0.5175

Here is a graph of how the "Big Six" Conference teams break down, from #1 on the left:

From Lightsheaber's College Football Project

And the same for the non-AQ conferences:

Some notes: The difference between the non-AQ's and the "Big Six" is not in the teams at the top (TCU rocks!), nor the teams at the bottom (Washington State is BCS-level, and quite awful). It's the teams at the middle. While the BCS conferences have a curve shaped like a mound, the non-AQ's have a more bowl-shaped distribution. This is not to say that denying BCS access is fair - far from it. Without money, would Notre Dame be any different than BYU? Both are private, religious schools. But the system currently in place awards one more than the other - hint: it's not the one winning football games!

Further notes: The Mountain West's top three programs (TCU, BYU, Utah) have a higher average score than all conferences except the SEC (Alabama, Florida, LSU) and the Big Ten (Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State). The Big Ten has the most schools above 0.700 in overall score (Wisconsin is the fourth).

I will be going through the conferences, starting at the bottom with the Sun Belt, and working my way up, giving awards for Best Bowl Win, Worst Bowl Loss, and give my predictions for the 2010 season.