We see a couple things in this.
The Big Ten’s first place picks make a very small percentage of its total BCS participants, thanks to having the smallest number of first place picks make the BCS but the largest number of BCS teams.
The Big 12 and especially the SEC had trouble putting their preseason first place picks in the BCS. In the case of the Big 12, part of it was guessing incorrectly as to whether OU or Texas would win the South. The SEC was a little messier, and I’ll explain more about that later.
Consensus Teams
I finally took a look at consensus teams. In this case, I defined a “consensus team” as a team that received three or fewer rankings of below first for its conference/division.
Surprisingly, only 29 of the 47 (61.7 percent) consensus teams made the BCS. Here is the number of consensus teams by year:
| Season | Consensus Teams |
|---|---|
| 1998 | 4 |
| 1999 | 5 |
| 2000 | 4 |
| 2001 | 3 |
| 2002 | 4 |
| 2003 | 4 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2006 | 8 |
| 2007 | 4 |
It’s interesting that from 1998 to 2003, there were never more than five consensus teams, and that only happened once. During that time, 69.57 percent of the consensus teams made the BCS.
In 2004 and 2005, there were six consensus teams, and in 2006 there were eight consensus teams. During those years where everyone suddenly agreed more often, just 45 percent of consensus teams made the BCS. Things toned down a bit in 2007, when all four consensus teams got to BCS bowls.
The Big Ten has only had five consensus teams, but all five have made the BCS. It appears that when everyone agrees on the Big Ten, its preseason champ makes the BCS; when everyone doesn’t necessarily agree, it’s preseason champ doesn’t make the BCS.
The Pac-10 has also had just five consensus teams. Only 1999 Arizona failed to make the BCS; the other four were USC from 2003-07. That’s an 80 percent success rate.
Next up in accuracy was the Big 12, which had nine consensus division winners in the BCS era. Seven of them made the BCS for a 77.8 percent accuracy rate. The two that missed it were 1999 Texas A&M and 2006 Nebraska.
After the Big 12 came the ACC. It had ten conference/division consensus teams, and six of them made the BCS (60 percent). Three of the failed four were divisional picks—VT in 2005 and both FSU and Miami in 2006—with only 2001 FSU falling short among pre-divisional play consensus teams (all of which were of course FSU as well).
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