The Pac-10 vs. SEC feud rages unchecked over at Bleacher Reportbeta, where Leon Wynn crunches a few numbers and comes to the conclusion that the SEC is truly THE powerhouse in college football.
One of the stats he pulls out is the SEC’s non-conference record:
Since 2000, the SEC has the nation’s best nonconference record (including bowl games): 247-95, for a .722 winning percentage.
One thought here: maybe the SEC has such a good nonconference record because they schedule such “juggernauts” as Western Carolina, Western Kentucky, and Troy? In fact, the article Leon is responding to makes just this point:
Since 1990, the SEC records against rival conferences is not as impressive as the SEC diehards would lend you to believe: Big-12 (20-16), PAC-10 (10-9), Big East (15-20), Big-10 (30-23), ACC (65-50) and the old Southwest Conference (20-19). So against the BCS Conference members since 1990, the SEC has an overall mark of 160 – 127. While this is good, it isn’t exactly dominant. But what the SEC teams hang their hat on is their record against the non-BCS regime: BWest (30-0), Sun (43-3), MAC (33-5), WAC (32-6), CUSA (57-20) and MWest (9-4) for an overall mark of 204-38.
We rest our case.
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Since you have demonstrated that every other claimant to the throne of “best football conference” has a losing record against the SEC, I assume you are resting having made the case that the SEC is number one.
Aside from their losing record against the SEC, what is the record of the Big 12, Big Ten, and Pac-10 against all those other conferences? Just as significantly, what percentage of their OOC games are scheduled against lower tier, non-BCS opponents? I would wager the answer is ‘their record is worse,’ and ‘they play as many or more.’