SEC Football: Debunking the Conference Superiority Myth

Question: How do you reconcile the belief that the SEC is the best conference, with a background in statistical math?

Answer: You don’t.

Almost all SEC football fans are convinced—beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt—that the SEC is the best football conference, and not only that, it’s a big step down to second place.  The media seems to agree, even after their brief flirtation with the Big 12 in 2008, which came to an abrupt end when the Big 12 South went 1-3 in bowl games. 

The reality doesn’t match the perception—at least not if you try to compare “apples to apples”, a key tenet of statistical comparison.  How does one go about that?

Forget the overall records—conferences play varying numbers of non-BCS teams, and it’s hardly fair to compare playing MAC or Sunbelt teams, to games against BCS conference teams.  We’ll just look at games against BCS teams.

Second, let’s throw Notre Dame (a BCS team) out of the equation and make this a zero-sum game between the BCS conferences.  When one conference wins a game, another loses it.  Notre Dame just muddies the water for this discussion.

Throw out bowl games.  The long layoff affects teams differently, the conference tie-ins don't result in equal quality (or quantity) of opponents for each conference, and some conferences have geographic advantages (proximity) in bowl games.  Let’s neutralize those effects by just looking at what are (mostly) home-and-home series during the regular season.  Over longer periods of time, the percentage of home and away games was pretty even for each of the conferences.

So, we’re left with regular-season games against BCS conference opponents.  What does last year look like?

Conference  Win Pct.  Opp. Win Pct.
ACC            0.620     0.657
Big East       0.500     0.579
Big Ten        0.500     0.564
Big 12          0.467     0.506
Pac-10         0.455     0.628
SEC             0.400     0.568

A few points certainly jump out.  The ACC was pretty good!  They played the toughest BCS schedule, and had—by a large margin—the highest win percentage.  Second, the Big 12 played the weakest schedule, especially compared to the ACC and the PAC 10 (zero opponents that finished the year in the top 10 for the Big 12, compared to five for the ACC).  Something that doesn’t show up is that the SEC played 10 of 14 games on the road.  That happens with one-year snapshots.

Everyone agreed the SEC was down last year (at least before the bowls).  How about looking at the last three years?  During that stretch, the SEC has won three straight BCS titles, and is an amazing 19-7 overall in bowl games.  Surely the SEC's superiority will reveal itself?

2006-2008

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?