Boise State Expected To Receive Invitation To Join Mountain West Conference

In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons for distortions in determining strength of conference is the effect of middle of the road teams. Let’s say we have two hypothetical conferences, each with an elite team at the top of equal strength. Let’s say the rest of conference A consists of poor quality teams, while conference B has a number of decent programs. Under this scenario we would expect conference A’s elite team to finish with a much better record than conference B’s elite team. We would expect this because playing more than one tough game a season (especially in a row) means you have less time to prepare, more injuries, tired players, etc. Also, because no win is a certainty, the probability of winning a certain number of games decreases as the opponents are stronger. A worse record would also place conference A’s elite team at a much higher position in the polls at the end of the season (let’s face it, strength of schedule is barely taken into account for those things).

While my hypothetical doesn’t come close to mirroring the MWC and the ACC, it illustrates the point. The first BCS component (top team ranked) that you hold so dearly is a very bad measure of a conference in my opinion. It rewards conferences that have good teams at the top and poor teams at the bottom (even if it doesn’t always play out that way) because we would expect those conferences to end up with very highly ranked teams and very poorly ranked teams. Similarly, the third component (teams in top 25) is a poor measure of a conference and is very similar to the first component. It rewards conferences who have a few good teams (good enough to get into the top 25) and a bunch of poor teams. A conference like the ACC in which there are a number of teams with some level of quality will always have trouble in these two categories.

I would argue that the second component (average ranking of all teams) is a much better measure of a conference as it measures the strength of the conference as a whole (not just the top teams). More importantly, it doesn’t allow a few teams to boost a conference’s ranking by winning 2 tough games and then cruising through an easy schedule. You neglected to point out that the ACC is 2nd on that list, a higher position than the MNC achieved in the other two.

Yes I am a Seminole. Yes I am biased towards the ACC. Yes I give props to BSU, TCU, Utah, and BYU for putting together good teams. Yes Utah beat Alabama, but so did a poor FSU team the year before (through I have to point out that Alabama was a better team in 2008 than in 2007, also keep in mind that it was likely a better team in 2009 than in 2008). I would also like to point out that FSU beat BYU last year and will likely do the same again this year. Which conference is better? I don’t know, but I it depends on the criteria and pointing to some of the BCS components that are based on subjective polls is not a very good measurement. (Oh and don’t forget BC, who is often under-ranked.)