Plenty of college football writers — including some at this very site — don’t care much for conference strength debates.
I actually don’t mind them at all. This is bread-and-butter water-cooler sports talk. While that kind of conversation can easily turn into a junk-food debate with lots of unsubstantiated and highly selective knee-jerk comments, it’s the stuff we always talk about as fans. We did this as teenagers at Denny’s late at night while blowing off homework. We did this in college. We do this as adults with co-workers or on Twitter (or both). It’s fun.
Sports are meant to be fun (even though they’ve become very serious — and big — business).
As a writer and not just as a fan, though, I have a responsibility to advance a debate in a careful way. As long as we can conduct a conference-strength debate without sliding into knee-jerk nothingness, we’re good. Let’s try to do this for the 2015 college football season.
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When conferences are evaluated and compared, such actions occur through a few common prisms and reference points: Quality at the top, quality depth, and top-to-bottom balance. Phrased differently, conferences are often compared in terms of the number of elite teams they have; the number of good teams they have; and the number of really bad teams they (don’t) have.
This season in college football, the strengths of a few power conferences were offset by weaknesses in the other particular facets of the comparison(s). If a Power 5 league excelled in one way, it did not in the other two. Let’s go through the leagues, keeping in mind that key argument-settling games (as is always the case in a small-sample-size season) did not and will not get played. We’d love to have seen North Carolina play Florida in an ACC-SEC debate-settler. Same for Oregon-Iowa or Ole Miss-Baylor. However, we did not and will not, so we’re left to compare with what we have on file.
Every conference has an argument, some better than others, but no league closed the sale in 2015. There IS no best conference, as much as many would like to get an answer to this question.
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The ACC and SEC possess a big-hitter at the top, and a measure of balance, but that “balance” is not a reflection of quality so much as it’s a revealer of the inability of heavyweight second and third teams to emerge in the conference, and of modest achievements from the middle of the pack in each league.
Ole Miss did defeat Alabama, but the Rebels got whacked by Memphis and Florida — not just outclassed, but severely thumped. The loss to Arkansas was unlucky, but a bad penalty could have rendered “Woo Pig Lateral” moot. The Rebels did a lot to lose that game, and a pinch of awful luck pushed them over the ledge. It’s hard to view Ole Miss in a particularly favorable light.
The same is true for Florida. The blowout of Ole Miss remains impressive, but the 27-2 loss at home to Florida State carries a mark, as does the narrow win over Florida Atlantic, in which a different pass-interference call easily could have led to a home-field humiliation against the Owls.
The rest of the SEC was demolished to the point of clarity… that it doesn’t even make the cut as one of the two best conferences in the country this season. The Big Ten and Big 12 have at least three if not four teams which achieved more than the SEC’s top three (or four) in 2015, and the SEC doesn’t have that middle-tier quality (teams 5 through 10) to offset the balance. The SEC East was a disaster again in 2015, and this year, the West clearly declined — thank you, Auburn and Mississippi State.
Let’s move to the ACC. If the SEC had Alabama at the top, the ACC had Clemson. North Carolina and Florida State are solid teams, but North Carolina did not test itself out of conference. Florida State pounded Florida, but let’s acknowledge how different that game might have been with Will Grier in for the Gators. We’ll get to see — and say — more about the ACC’s No. 2 and No. 3 teams after UNC plays Baylor and Florida State tackles Houston. It would have been ideal if Florida State had been able to play (say) Notre Dame or Iowa in a bowl. As it is, it’s hard to get a very precise read on UNC or FSU at this stage.
What about the middle tier of the ACC? Pittsburgh’s collapse against Miami prevented the Panthers from being viewed more favorably, but Miami’s win makes the Canes a lot better at the end of the season than previously anticipated, so that’s a wash. Duke tailed off. Louisville did not make a strong impression, but at least the Cardinals beat Kentucky in Game 12. The ACC did win a majority of its games against the SEC East on Nov. 28. That’s good, but it’s the SEC East — let’s not get carried away here. There’s a lot of “average” in the ACC’s middle ranks. Boston College upset Northern Illinois, but the bottom portion of the league was not that impressive. Wake Forest, Syracuse, and B.C. did not leave strong impressions. Virginia is the best of the bottom-feeders in the ACC.
As we move to the other Power 5 leagues, is there anything to noticeably elevate them above the ACC?
In the Big Ten, we showed how being 9-3 can mean very little in the way of achievement at Wisconsin. The Big Ten also shielded both Iowa and Northwestern from having to play a majority of the East division’s top three. Iowa played Michigan State, but not Ohio State or Michigan. Northwestern played Michigan, but not Ohio State or Michigan State. Playing those games would leave us with a better idea of where the Big Ten stands in a larger context. Yes, the trio of OSU, MSU and Iowa is formidable. It’s a better trio than what other leagues can offer. In this sense, the Big Ten stands ahead of other conferences. However, the vast sea of mediocrity in evidence at Penn State and Minnesota and Nebraska and Illinois and Indiana makes it hard to vouch for the league in terms of “quality depth” and balance arguments.
Again, as you can see, if a league had a strong case to make in one aspect of the conference strength debate, it fell short in the other areas.
In the Pac-12, the balance-based pillar is the strongest one. Washington State, Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Utah are all solid teams. They weren’t great, but they were all capable of greatness when clicking. Those moments emerged, but they didn’t sustain themselves. The Pac-12 has a better middle tier than any other Power 5 league. However, it lacked heft at the top of the league. Stanford, though beating Notre Dame, lost its other two biggies in 2015, to Northwestern and Oregon. Not beating the second-best team in your own league is something teams in other conferences did not fail to do. Bama beat Florida. Clemson beat both Florida State and North Carolina. Michigan State beat Ohio State and Iowa. Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State and TCU. Stanford would have been a shoo-in for an eight-team playoff, but the Cardinal had to be excluded from a four-team field. There was no real choice; the reality of the situation was obvious.
The Big 12 could have been the best league in the country, but injuries create a grade of “incomplete” in 2015. Had TCU and Baylor not been savaged by injuries, the league would have been even stronger at the top than it was. Had Kansas State not been victimized by the injury bug, the league would have been stronger in the middle. At full strength, give me Baylor, Oklahoma State, OU, and TCU over any other four-team assemblage in the country. However, 2015 did not give me — or anyone else — that reality. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.
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All in all, if one conference had a strong case to make about its superiority in 2015, that case was counter-balanced by weaknesses elsewhere in the league. It was just that kind of season.
Want to know which conference was best in 2015? Sometimes, the best answer is “none of the above.” Life can be unsatisfying sometimes… and the same goes for college football.
