A brief look over at ESPN.com and you’d think that half of their college columnists are betrothed to Tim Tebow, the Florida Gators, and the SEC as a whole. Doing some good old fashioned statistical work, things are looking good for the rest of college football, if trends from last year continue.

I basically took every single conferences overall record and boiled it down to a nice friendly win percentage. Here’s how 2008 stacked up:

1. SEC 59.7%

2. Big 12 59.4%

3. Big East 58.6%

4. ACC 57.6%

5. Big 10 55.3%

6. Pac 10 53.7%

Of note here is the fact that only the SEC, Big 12, and ACC have twelve teams, the Big 10, ironically enough, only has eleven, the Pac 10 an accurate ten teams, and the Big East only has eight teams. More importantly is the fact that the best team from the Big East was Cincinnati, who lost to Oklahoma 52-26, lost their bowl game to Virginia Tech 20-7 (that margin is even greater than the loss to Oklahoma if you’d watched the game), and had wins against teams like Miami(OH), Akron, Marshall, and Eastern Kentucky. 

The Pac 10 suffered from two things, the second of which will be made more clear once I drop down the 2007 results. The first, though, is of course the state of Washington, which really brought the whole conference down, but this is a look at conferences as a whole, and you’re only as strong as your weakest teams in the end.

As for the top, it was quite clear this year that the Big 12 had made huge strides in closing the gap between the itself and the SEC, but was still clearly a step behind them. It also shows that the ACC is indeed a middle of the road conference, but not the drudgery everyone seems to want to make us out to be.

Now for the 2007 results to show you just how big of a change all of this was:

1. SEC 61%

2. Big East 59.4%

3. Big 10 58.5%

4. Big 12 58.4%

5. ACC 55.2%

6. Pac 10 55.1%

First important note is, again, the fact that the Big East’s numbers are skewed by the fact that they only face each other six times, giving them on average two more cup cake out of conference games to schedule per team, and believe me they do. With the Big East out of the picture, the glaring difference in depth between the SEC and the rest of college football is shown quite clearly.

Now for the increases and decreases. First up is the easiest to associate, and that’s the obvious decrease in record year over year for the Pac 10. Sliding down 1.4% in winning percentage is pretty obviously linked to the out of conference scheduling of the MWC, and their rise in the ranks of mid majors last year, as they saw a 3.6% increase in winning percentage from 53% to 56.6%, and much of that could be attributed to victories over Pac 10 “foes.” This of course begs the question, if the Pac 10 didn’t have USC, what would stop the BCS committee from switching out the Pac 10 in favor of the clearly deeper and stronger MWC?

Next is the dramatic 3.2% drop for the Big 10, which is getting dangerously close to the territory everyone thought the ACC had placed itself in. This was obviously linked with the complete collapse of Michigan, and the Big 10’s inability to win a bowl game, which is more worrisome than the overall winning percentage, just as the ACC’s was previously. 

The SEC dropped 1.3%, clearly a sign of wins going the other way, most notably some key victories by ACC teams like Georgia Tech over Georgia, and a few others that contributed to the ACC holding an advantage, overall, against the SEC in head to head play.

The Big 12, and the ACC, were the only 2 conferences to see an increase in winning percentage. The Big 12 increased it’s winning percentage a full 1% to close the gap with the SEC, but more importantly, and more noticeable, was the ACC’s 2.4% increase. If you couple that with the fact that five of the ACC’s six bowl game losses came by less than seven points, the ACC as a whole was a touchdown away from possibly having a 60.8% win percentage.

This isn’t an article about could have beens’, but instead a look at how close the ACC was last year from being that elite conference all envisioned when it pilfered the three best Big East teams. The most interesting part about all of that was how young the entire conference was. The ACC, by far, started the most freshmen at all positions, and all of those players are a year older now. No, we might not see a national title berth this year, since a repeat of last years agonizing ACC title race is probably in the cards as of this moment, with no team looking quite poised to take the throne, but the performance in bowl games, against teams not from the ACC, should be markedly better.

My most humble of opinions, don’t be surprised if the ACC not only tops a 60% winning percentage, but goes 8-1 in bowl games while doing so.

PS- To those of you who are wondering where the ACC preview is, it’s on it’s way, but it has turned out to be a far more difficult task than I initially envisioned, so patience will be key with this one. Fret not, though, I’m hard at work on it.

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