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Do you agree with this Florida article?

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MililaniBuckeye said:
Many of the bowls had higher SEC conference-standing teams play lower Big Ten conference-standing teams (e.g., #3 SEC vs #4 Big Ten). If he really wanted to compare the two conferences, he'd have to use all the head-to-head results between the conferences all-time (all teams, regular season in addition to bowl games).
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My point as well...

And, why exactly use the AP rankings, just because they are still around doesn't mean they have always been accurate or the most well regarded...

I find this part kind of funny as well (about the Heisman):
The Big 10 won this battle 13-7. Unfortunately, the Heisman is very over-hyped and way too subjective to be included in this discussion. I told them that the award is won in the media, not on the field.

Becuase we all know, the media has nothing to do with winning National Championships :) We certainly don't see that with USC winning the AP title in 2003, and I'm sure it never happened before then where it would have affected these useless statistics
 
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MililaniBuckeye said:
Many of the bowls had higher SEC conference-standing teams play lower Big Ten conference-standing teams (e.g., #3 SEC vs #4 Big Ten). If he really wanted to compare the two conferences, he'd have to use all the head-to-head results between the conferences all-time (all teams, regular season in addition to bowl games).
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It's mainly for this reason that I hate using bowl records for the conferences as a tool to measure the strength of the conferences. How many times in the 8 years of BCS games has the Big 10 sent 2 teams to BCS bowls? 4? 5? I'd bet that that's more than any other conference.

Another argument that I've heard is that if you match up #1 SEC vs #1 Big Ten, #2 SEC and #2 Big Ten, and so on to #11 vs #11, the SEC has a slightly better overall record. I think that this is an even worse argument, because the SEC has a 12th team: usually Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt gets beat by everyone, so of course everyone is going to have a better record in the SEC.

And is the writer arguing about which conference is better historically? If so, I couldn't give a flying pants about that. (I kinda want a pair of flying pants.) I'd be more interested in which conference is better right now. How do we measure that? Maybe by the average of the BCS ranks of each conference. Or number of teams in the top-25.
 
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Hello Guys, I am from TigerDroppings.com and I wrote the original article. I have tremendous respect for Big Ten teams, and the article was written as a joke (I lived in Chicago for two years, so many of my friends up there are big Big Ten fans, and we like to argue about conference strength).

The main reason for discounting Penn State and Mich State's NC's was because you cannot know for sure if they would have had the same success if they were in a conference, playing a brutal conference schedule.

Also, bowl matchups are for better than regular season matchups when determining strength. It is far more likely that the bowl matchup is a more even matchup than a regular season matchup.

Anyhow, I think both conferences are stronger than the other major conferences. I just wish we played each other more in the regular season.

Thanks for having me, and stop by TigerDroppings.com when you get a chance. I will add a link to this site from our College Sports Links page.

Take care...

http://www.tigerdroppings.com
 
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I wish they would matchup our conferences more often too... thanks for stopping by. It's pretty easy to rile up the average cfb fan these days, myself included.

I'll have to get out my waders before wallowing thru the tiger droppings over there :wink:
 
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BayBuck said:
Good point--I wonder what the all-time in-season head-to-head record is for these 2 conferences?

On that note, cfbdatawarehouse.com gives the SEC the "all-time conference rankings" nod over the Big10, but their advantage comes almost solely from the "Big 4 Bowl points" section, whereas the Big10 has a sizeable advantage in "schedule points" and "Nat.champs points".

http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/rankings/all_time_conf_rankings.php
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One of the problems with using this format is with the "Big 4 Bowl Points" section. It was until I believe 1977? that other Big Ten teams other than the champion could play in another bowl. This seroiusly curtailed the amount of points the Big Ten had the opportunity to compete for. Also do not forget the "no repeat" rule the conference had for years which in some years prevented the Big Ten from sending their best. Also the '61 tOSU team may have been selected as national champs if the faculty had let the team compete in the Rose Bowl that year.
 
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I'd have to agree with the facts the article uses. Penn State twice got to be NC by beating the likes of Pitt, Rutgers and Maryland year after year. I think if you ask Jo Pa if his schedule is tougher now than it was in his glory years as king of East coast football you'd get a "Hell yes," answer.

You can point to Vandy and Kentucky, but Indiana has one of the worst records in Div 1 and Northwestern isn't much better. And isn't it ironic that IU is the team who has played the most games against SEC teams including a newly created (new in the sense that we're talking about 1920 to present) annual mix up with Kentucky... which they haven't exactly dominated.

But you don't get to be SEC champ by beating Vandy and KY. You have to go through a brutal schedule. in which you have to beat at least half of the teams on their 'A list': Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, Florida and a second tier of LSU, Ol Miss, Mississippi State, South Carolina (and don't you think their coach doesn't wish they were back in the ACC?) I don't see a diet of cup cakes there.

I would suggest is that there is a degree of bias to the Bowl games. The Orange, Sugar, Peach, Citrus, Independence and Gator bowls are essentially home games for the SEC/ACC. Indeed these bowls were created to make tourist bucks and to showcase SEC/ACC football. Yes, each school receives the opportunity to the same number of tickets, but the SEC school gets the locals. I have no way of proving it, but I would suggest that geography dictates that the southern teams have the home field advantage. This difference also means changes in training schedules and facilities are going to be more significant for a Big 10 team. It also comes down to something as simple as uniforms. How many times have you seen OSU in scarlet jerseys at a bowl game?

If home teams are more successful than visitors in the regular season does it not suggest that they would be more successful in the Bowl season also?

I might also add that there weren't many SEC - Big 10 matchups in the 1930s - thru the 70s. During that time the Big 10 only allowed one team to play in a bowl game, and when they were generally conceded to be the dominant football conference. During that time Big 10 schools were integrated and thus "Un invitable" to many of the bowl venues outside of the Rose Bowl. It was after USC came to town in 63 and blasted Alabama, 35 - 7 that Bear Bryant opened the SEC to the black athlete. What a change that has made in SEC football.

But let's give the SEC credit where it is due, theirs is strong league indeed and perhaps the best in current college ranks.
 
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cincibuck said:
I might also add that there weren't many SEC - Big 10 matchups in the 1930s - thru the 70s. During that time the Big 10 only allowed one team to play in a bowl game, and when they were generally conceded to be the dominant football conference. During that time Big 10 schools were integrated and thus "Un invitable" to many of the bowl venues outside of the Rose Bowl. It was after USC came to town in 63 and blasted Alabama, 35 - 7 that Bear Bryant opened the SEC to the black athlete. What a change that has made in SEC football.
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cinci, I think you're referring to the game when the Bear brought Sam 'Bam' Cunningham over to the Bama locker room after the game.

That was actually a 42-21 USC victory in Bama's home opener at Birmingham in 1970. It's interesting that Alabama won the rematch in USC's home opener the very next year.
 
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