Week 10 College Football Conference Power Rankings

Every one of the five power conferences has at least one undefeated team. And barring something unforeseen, after this week's Florida State-Miami game, every one of those leagues will be down to exactly one.

But only two teams can make the BCS National Championship Game, which means that things like strength of schedule and quality of competition could come into play at the end of the year.

Those realities of the BCS system make conference valuations important. Is it better to go undefeated in one power conference than the other? Did one team have to prove more on the road toward zero losses?

Here's a look at how all the leagues stack up.

Average Sagarin Rankings courtesy of Jeff Sagarin at USA Today. His ratings are one of the computer metrics used in the BCS formula.

11. Sun Belt (Last Week: 11)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 119.4 (LW: 120.6)

The Sun Belt is bad. Really bad. But it's not as far away from (the back of) the pack as some would have you think.

Western Kentucky is not an awful team. It beat Kentucky this year and hung around with Tennessee for a very short while in Neyland Stadium, eventually undoing itself with a rapid succession of pick-sixes. 

Still, that was the Hilltoppers' only non-conference loss, and now they have started Sun Belt play 1-3.

Other than Georgia State, all seven of these teams have a legitimate chance to beat any of the other seven on any given Saturday. If nothing else, at least that makes for some intrigue. 

10. C-USA (Last Week: 10)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 113.5 (LW: 113.4)

C-USA gave us one of the best games of the season last week, and unlike what you might expect from a lower conference tilt, the quality of play looked pretty good.

Middle Tennessee beat Marshall 51-49 on the last play, flexing a little bit of depth and parity in a league that was supposed to be all about the Thundering Herd and East Carolina at the top.

Between the three teams mentioned, resurgent Tulane, improving-each-week Rice and always steady North Texas, this conference has five teams that could proudly represent it in postseason play.

9. MAC (Last Week: 8)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 116.4 (LW: 116.9)

The MAC is stratified between the genuinely good and prolifically bad, so there are sometimes a number of boring upsets each week.

But every week is typically good for at least one intriguing game, and last week's showdown between Bowling Green and Toledo (a three-point road win for the Rockets) did not disappoint.

There are only three games on the schedule this week, so nothing to see here, but the week after that has Ohio at Buffalo and Week 12 is absolutely stacked.

The conference is down a bit from last year, but there are still enough things here to like.

8. Independent (Last Week: 9)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 109.6 (LW: 109.0)

It's hard trying to value the Independents relative to other conferences since...well, it's not a conference.

Still, at the very top, none of the leagues behind the Independents can hold a candle to it. Even in the two leagues above it, you could make a case for Notre Dame or BYU as the best team outside of the traditional power five.

Navy looks pretty good this year and has a nice-looking win at Indiana, while Old Dominion could be on the upswing in its first ever FBS season.

That's not enough to ignore the presence of Idaho and New Mexico State, but it's enough to forgive it.

7. MWC (Last Week: 7)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 93.6 (LW: 92.0)

Had Utah State and Boise State been able to keep quarterbacks Chuckie Keeton and Joe Southwick healthy, Fresno State might be the third-best team in this conference.

It might have also kept the MWC out of a (potential) BCS Bowl.

No matter how bad the Bulldogs have looked, the conference would still benefit from them going undefeated—which is god news, since it's hard to say where on their cupcake schedule they might go down.

That being said, between Derek Carr, David Fales, Brett Smith and (when healthy) Keeton, this league is absolutely loaded at the quarterback position, which at least gives it an identity.

6. AAC (Last Week: 6)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 78.1 (LW: 76.8)

Houston made an emphatic statement in blowing out Rutgers, and now the AAC has three teams—along with UCF and Louisville—that it can be legitimately proud to call its own.

But beyond that, things get bleak in a hurry. Cincinnati and Rutgers aren't what they were last year (or what they were expected to be this year), and neither poses a genuine threat to anyone in a bowl game.

Plus, at the bottom, with UConn, Temple and South Florida, the AAC has three of the legitimate worst teams in the FBS.

Were the MWC better (read: healthier) it would have an argument to be ranked No. 6.

5. ACC (Last Week: 3)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 52.9 (LW: 52.3)

What started out looking like a banner year in the ACC has devolved into something of a mess—at least so far as Sagarin's numbers are concerned.

Florida State (3) is the only only team that places top-10 in Sagarin's ratings, Clemson (14) is the only other team that places top-25 and Miami (28) is the only other team that places top-30.

This comes in stark contrast to the other polls, which favor Miami and its undefeated record and have been a tad more forgiving with regard to Clemson.

No matter how you feel about those teams, though, Virginia Tech's loss against Duke last week leaves the ACC without a fourth legitimate contender, which drops the conference way down to No. 5.

4. Big Ten (Last Week: 4)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 48.7 (LW: 49.2)

The Big Ten is certainly not top-heavy—a big reason people are down on Ohio State's road to the national title game—and only places three teams in the top 34 of Sagarin's rankings.

But what the conference lacks in star power, it makes up for in decency. That is, other than Illinois and Purdue, every team is at least capable of being competitive.

With 10 teams in the Sagarin top 60 and eight in the top 50, the Big Ten lunges past the couple of elite teams of the ACC. It presents a bigger challenge week-in and -out. 

3. Big 12 (Last Week: 5)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 40.6 (LW: 40.7)

The Oklahoma-Texas Tech game went about as well as it could have for the conference at large.

OU didn't expose the Red Raiders as frauds—as some had feared—and both teams played well in a competitive, down-to-the-wire game. Neither looked like it would do a disservice to the conference should it make the BCS.

Combined with the resurgence at Texas, the surprisingly efficient defense at Oklahoma State and the unrelenting onslaught of Baylor, that gives the conference five legitimate teams that seem talented enough to compete at a national level.

In a league with just 10 total participants, that is a nice proportion.

2. Pac-12 (Last Week: 2)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 36.6 (LW: 35.7)

If not for Colorado and (especially) Cal, which border dangerously close to being statistical outliers, the Pac-12 might challenge the SEC in terms of average Sagarin ranking.

Never has the conference had so many quality teams. Washington State and Utah have both proved decent through nine weeks, and 10 Pac-12 schools rank inside Sagarin's top 50.

The conference is also loaded at the top, though Oregon is the sole remaining undefeated team and most realistic BCS national title contender.

Still, Stanford is likely the best one-loss team in the country, and if it beats the Ducks in Palo Alto, it will have a chance—with some help—to sneak into that spot.

1. SEC (Last Week: 1)

Average Sagarin Ranking: 30.1 (LW: 29.7)

For those who want to say that the SEC is down, or that No. 1 Alabama has no true competition on the road to Pasadena, chew on this: Nine teams in the Sagarin top 26 come from the Southeastern Conference.

Per those adjusted numbers—which include no subjective or regional bias—35 percent of the best 26 teams in the country come from one league. That is classic SEC.

'Bama is still the No. 1 team in America, and its schedule still poses a couple of realistic chances to lose against LSU and at Auburn. Plus, as the East gets healthy, one team should be able to peak at the right time and emerge as solid competition in the conference championship game.

If the Crimson Tide go undefeated, they will have earned their consensus No. 1 spot.