Ranking the nations best college football conferences

[SouthFLBully]

So where does the BE come in? 

7. Big East

After proving it was BCS-worthy with a few key bowl victories in recent seasons, the Big East again needs a jolt of energy in 2009. There doesn't seem to be a dominant team in the league, although Pittsburgh, Rutgers and West Virginia are potentially good.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4383167

We are ranked behind the MWC, which came in at #6.

The kicker is the quote "Pittsburgh, Rutgers and West Virginia are potentially good."

Guess that means we have no chance of being a good team this year, we might as well just call off the season......  :

[South_Florida_Flip]

A 2-5 conference record from the prior season and 4 new OL starters isn't going to garner USF much attention. There is plenty of motivation for the guys this season.

[DELdaBull]

The Big East has to prove itself every year because the markie football teams (Cuse and Pitt) suck really. Imagine if Miss State and Vandy were on the top of the SEC. They would be lacking respect also.

[TRUTH D. Antagonist]

The Big East has to prove itself every year because the markie football teams (Cuse and Pitt) suck really. Imagine if Miss State and Vandy were on the top of the SEC. They would be lacking respect also.

uhh, what? 

'Cuse hasn't been a "marquee" team since the McNabb days and Pitt has never actually been a real contender while in the Big East.  Pitt "won" the BEast title ONCE in a 4-way split back in '04 and subsequently got bootyraped by Urban Meyer's Utes in the Fiesta Bowl. Pitt's glory days are way back in the annals of history, well before the Big East Conference even existed.

if anybody--- whether it be media, coaches, fans or anybody else--- actually measures the quality of the Big East conference based on expectations of 'Cuse and Pitt being "marquee" teams, then they probably haven't watched a game of football in at least 10 years... maybe even 30.

West Virginia has clearly been the only consistent conference heavyweight still left in the Big East.

they've won or shared the BEast title in two of the four years since realignment and received two of the conference's four BCS bowl bids as well--- which included wins over SEC champ Georgia and B12 champ Oklahoma in the Sugar and Fiesta Bowls. they also shared in the two conference titles prior to realignment. that's winning or sharing 4 of the last 6 BEast titles.

the real reason the Big East has to prove itself year in and year out is because:

1) Miami--- despite it's recent decline--- was seen as the best team in the league when they bolted for the ACC.

2) VTech's recent [regular season] success consistently competing or winning the ACC makes the Big East look weak for losing the program to realignment.

3) we are a small--- in fact the smallest--- conference, and 3 of our member schools [uL, UC, USF] were siphoned from non-BCS midmajors... a 4th [uConn] moved up from 1AA to 1A independent not too long ago and only recently started up a football program, just like us.

that makes 4 schools in an 8 team league that either have no winning tradition or no tradition in the BCS... two others [Cuse & Pitt] are seen as rapidly declining programs and another [buttgers] has been a symbol of futility for as long as college football has existed.

4) rather than make the Big East look like a DEEP conference, Louisville and Cinci winning the league, UConn sharing it, and Buttgers making a good run at it a couple years back has made the conference look "weak" to outsiders because these teams that are not "traditional" powers have won the conference.

5) MELTDOWNS...  WVU losing to Shitt a couple years back and blowing their chance at a BCS NC bid really f*cked the whole conference.  getting a NC bid [if not winning] would have given the BEast cred, barring a complete beatdown in the NC game of course. our meltdown in 2007, climbing to #2 only to take a historic nosedive capped off by the Ducks' 9th-string QB ****ting down our necks hurt the conference as well... then of course Cinci getting spanked by VTech last year and UConn taking a dump vs. Wake the year they split the title have all really damaged the conference's credibility.

in order to gain credibility, what the Big East needs--- short of raiding the ACC for BC & the Terps or getting ND to become full members--- are more strong regular season OOC wins [e.g. USF over AU, KU; WVU over AU; Cinci over OregonState; etc.] and a big win in a BCS bowl, PREFERABLY by a team other than WVU over a team OTHER than the ACC champ or a midmajor at large.

[windbane]

Mountain West Standings

TEAM CONF. W-L OVERALL W-L

Utah            8-0 13-0

TCU               7-1 11-2

Brigham Young 6-2 10-3

Air Force 5-3 8-5

Colorado State 4-4 7-6

UNLV               2-6 5-7

New Mexico 2-6 4-8

Wyoming 1-7 4-8

San Diego State 1-7 2-10

Half of their conference is terrible.  Give me a break. 

ACC has been terrible in BCS games this decade, too.

[Guest hm101]

per my personal blog:

I had some free time this weekend so I tried to get a little project done...

I was tired of reading how weak the Big East was and that the MWC was better, blah blah blah. So I of course asked - where are the numbers? Since there weren't that many out there, I had to do some of the footwork, and thanks to Excel and ctrl+c, this task was made alot easier.

I took all the top 60 rankings as determined by the latest USA Today popularity contest... I mean, poll... and placed them in a table. I then complied a list of the remaining 60 FBS teams, averaged their Quad score (NYT blog... not the best, but a decent, well researched source) and the Rivals score to get the remaining rankings for the bottom 60 teams.

I then averaged out the rankings by conference. Here are the findings:

SEC -33.5

ACC - 41.04

Big 12 - 42.04

Big 10 - 44.05

Pac 10 - 45.3

Big East - 49.94

Ind. - 64.5

MWC - 65.44

WAC - 76.56

CUSA - 81.79

MAC - 86.5

Sun Belt - 96.11

The MWC is top-heavy, with Utah, TCU, and BYU all in the top 25. After that the next best team is #57 Air Force. On the other hand, the top 5 Big East teams are all in the top 40.

Apparently, ESPN's analysts either failed to see the distribution of success in the conferences, or simply do not care and exclusively value the 1, 2, or 3 big names of a conference rather than it's competitiveness as a whole.

P.S. Ill probably post another analysis of strength-of-schedule soon if free time permits.

http://kevinetc.blogspot.com/2009/08/conference-rankings-fail.html

[Joe]

There is no doubt in my mind that the BE is a better conference collectively. That being siad, we weren't last season. Just look how TCU faired v. Oklahoma compared to Cincy. While both were rocked only Florida kept Oklahoma's offense in check.

Last season in the MWC was very similar to the BE in 2006.

I don't think the MWC will be as successful this year.

[smazza]

So where does the BE come in? 

7. Big East

After proving it was BCS-worthy with a few key bowl victories in recent seasons, the Big East again needs a jolt of energy in 2009. There doesn't seem to be a dominant team in the league, although Pittsburgh, Rutgers and West Virginia are potentially good.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4383167

We are ranked behind the MWC, which came in at #6.

The kicker is the quote "Pittsburgh, Rutgers and West Virginia are potentially good."

Guess that means we have no chance of being a good team this year, we might as well just call off the season......  :

big east out of conference scheduling is a joke

league commissioner needs to address issue

usf is middle of pack big east team----disappointing