Participation Percentage

It was pointed out to me that a conference should get credit for having a high percentage of its total teams participate in bowl games, so giving credit where credit is due, the SEC has us beat. Here's the results.

The Big East dominates in winning percentage, and gets a second place finish for percentage of bowl participants.  With the amount of bowls today, most conferences should have more than half of their teams in bowl games.
 

Polls and Rankings

The final Poll results are important in ranking how well a conference did. How can we judge the level of competition each conference played against? All of the following were compiled using the AP and Coaches polls final post-season results.

The total number of votes, or "points" were added up from both polls for each of the teams, then divided by the number of bowl teams. The first is a look at how highly each of a conference's team were ranked in the final polls, on average.  The far right column is to show where the amount of average points each conference has would land the team ranked in the final AP Poll. Yes, this will be slightly off, since I used the Coaches' Poll in the points, but they are all off the same, and it is not used to rank the conference, just to give an approximation and relate to "real world" results of where the average bowl team finished.

As we can see, the Pac 10 barely edges out the Big XII for number one, aided by Oklahoma gaining all number one votes in both polls.  The Big East lands solidly in number 3, also third in total votes, not that bad.

We want to give credit to the rankings of the level of competition, as well as the teams in the conference, so here are the average amount of points per team each conference played against. The rankings are derived the same as the ones above, only for the competition.

The ACC is heavily aided by playing Oklahoma, the winner of every number one vote.  The Big East struggles in this category, but we can partly attribute this to the fact that we beat all of our ranked opponents, thus they fell in the rankings.  I should point out that these are the final rankings, and since the Big East won most of its bowl games, the opponents all dropped in the rankings.

To be more accurate, the rankings going into the bowl season should have been used.  Notice that the conferences with the two worst winning percentages come out in the lead in this ranking, reverse from the Big East, an important point to bring up when arguing our case.
 

Points Scored

On average, who scored the most points in bowl games? The Big East, of course.  Led by the high-powered offenses of Virginia Tech and Miami, we rack up an average of 37 points a game.  These numbers are found simply by dividing the total points scored by a conference by the amount of bowl teams.

The Big XII comes in a close second, helped by Nebraska's 66-17 blowout of Northwestern.  These rankings show which conferences feature powerful offenses.

Next, we look at defenses. The following shows us who has the best defenses, with regards to average points allowed per bowl game.

As you can see, these rankings are pretty close at the top, but the Big Ten is a clear loser here, allowing an average of 35 points a game (Northwestern's rollover act against Nebraska didn't help here).  The Big East does fairly well in this category, given the small margins at the top.

Here are some interesting numbers -- the margin of victory ranking.  The BCS is trying to minimize the use of this statistic in their rankings, but we use it here to show how dominating a conference was over its opponents.  These numbers are derived just by dividing the margin of victory by the amount of bowl teams, and therefore do not show the average amount each winning team won by, but rather the total average margin.  Thus the conferences with losing records have a negative average margin of victory.

These numbers show us that the Big East dominated opponents, especially since this includes games lost.  We won our games by a total of 187 to 132, a margin of 55 points. Conference USA won its two games by only 4 points, and the SEC, on the other hand, lost its games by an average of less than 1 point, a total margin of only 6. The Big Ten clearly shows that overall it was dominated by opponents, being outscored 210 to 130 in bowl games.

Some Imaginary Numbers

It was pointed out to me that conferences should get some credit for having more than one team in the BCS, for going to the National Championship, or for winning their BCS game, etc.  So I have used some imaginary numbers to incorporate this into some rankings.

Each team participating, but losing a BCS bowl: 1 point
Having a team participate in, but lose the National Title Game: 2 points
Each team that wins a BCS game: 3 points
Having a team win the National Title: 4 points

I think that we can all agree these numbers are pretty fair as a representation for participation in the BCS bowls. The following are the rankings based on these numbers:

The Pac 10 dominates, and the National Title winners come in second. The Fiesta shaft hurts the Big East here.
 

The Final Tally

So now you're asking, "Okay, so there's a bunch of numbers, but who is number 1?"  Well, to find that out, lets use our own "BCS Computer Formula."  Below is the final rankings, taken from an average of the above rankings.  The rank is based on the "Average Rank" column, which is the other categories divided by eight.

As you can see, we end up in a tie for number one. We have an argument over our 'Hoo friends, because the ACC represented fairly poorly this season, and we even have a decent argument over the National Champion conference.  It's our hated enemy, the Pac 10, who continue to give us fits.  The rest of the conferences are clearly spread, but the Big East and the Pac 10 stand together at the top, tied at an average ranking of 2.5. So who had the best showing?

This is where it becomes apparent it was important we get an at-large BCS bid. If we had been asked to play the Fiesta Bowl rather than Oregon State, and assuming we beat Notre Dame (which is reasonable, given the margin OSU beat them by), we win this little formula. Not only would the BCS points go up, but also the rankings of Big East teams and their competition also.  But would the number three Big East team have beaten Clemson? Most likely the Big East would have enough of an advantage to pull ahead in these rankings, but we would really never know what else would result.

If it wasn't for the crybaby-I'm-taking-my-ball-and-going-home-overrated-flash-in-the-pan-Huskies/Beavers conference, we wouldn't have this problem, this not nearly being the biggest of them, by the way (can you say $1.3 million + heavy national exposure?).

But we aren't bound to lot of preset rules like the real BCS system.  In a situation like this, its always nice to use head to head competition (I know all 'Canes fans would be behind me on this one):

Boston College 31
Arizona State 17

If only the BCS were this accurate.