The Numbers Don’t Lie: The Big 12 Is Overrated

As you all have probably seen by now, the AP poll is out, and it’s once again littered with Big 12 teams.

When we left off last January, there were four Big 12 teams ranked in the top 10 and five in the top 25.  Currently, the AP preseason poll shows five Big 12 teams in the top 14.  The order of the teams may be different, but in the previously released USA Today Coaches' Poll, the Big 12 also had five teams within the top 14.

Just looking at the surface, you would think this makes the Big 12 one of the more powerful conferences in the land—real world-beaters.

But when you look at the numbers behind the numbers, they point to the exact opposite.  The Big 12 gets the bulk of their out-of-conference wins against the lower echelon of Division I, and even worse, many of these wins come against FCS (formerly I-AA) teams.

Now at this point the Big 12 fans (and you know who you are) are probably yelling that everyone else does the same thing.  This is not the case, and no one has as wide of a discrepancy in this area as the Big 12.

Let's quickly examine some numbers: Over the past five seasons, the Big 12 is 167-50 (77.2 percent winning percentage) in non-conference games, NOT including bowl games.

At first glance, this appears to be a tremendous record, and in fact it is—but let’s see what happens when we dig a little deeper.  Of these 217 regular season games, only 28 (13 percent) of them have been against ranked teams.  In those games, the Big 12 has a dreadful 6-22 (21 percent winning percentage) record.

Over the same time period, the Big 12 has played in 40 bowl games and is 19-21 (47.5 percent winning percentage), which is nothing special to begin with.

But when we look at the bowl games against those opponents who were ranked, the Big 12’s record drops to a miserable 10-17 (37 percent winning percentage).

These are hardly the numbers which indicate a power conference and one worthy of such high rankings when being compared to others throughout the country.

                                  ====>Dig even deeper into the numbers here