Final Sagarin ratings for 2009

[deliverance]

I love the post above by Head Roadie. He's just speaking the truth. Anyone that looks at those two conferences objectively knows that neither one has been very good for a few years now.

[The Ancient Enemy]

Did the B10 champ defeat the P10 champ? Did the 2nd place B10 team beat the ACC champ? Did the 3rd best B10 beat the 3rd best SEC? Did the 4th best B10 beat Miami?

[ham55]

Yes, for all of the above.

[El-Moldo]

A) Were 4 out of the 11 Big Ten teams ineligible to play in a bowl?
B) Was the cumulative regular season records of these teams 17-31?
C) Did 2 of the Big Ten teams make bowl eligibility by the skin of their teeth, at 6-6?
D) Did these 2 lose bowl games and end up with losing records for the season?
E) Does that mean over half of the Big Teams ended up with losing records?
F) Does everyone think that this diminishes what the top 4 teams have accomplished?
G) Does this hurt the image of the Big Ten?

[El-Moldo]

Anyone ever go to a track meet? Let's say that a certain school takes FIRST place in 4 events, but then doesn't place in any of the other events. Would you say that this team was good, just because they had 4 first place finishes. Or would you say that the team was not good because of how the TEAM finished in the scoring, considering the team's ENTIRE effort? That's the problem with the Big Ten. Couple of big wins, but stunk up the joint with the rest of the teams. The Big Ten SUFFERS because of ALL the teams.

[KirkHerbstreit]

That might be the worst analogy I've ever heard. So, what would not beating a top 25 team outside of your conference in a "track meet" qualify as? 5th place finish? If so, the Big East is full of them.

The Big 10 is the first conference in 10 years to beat 4 top 15 teams in a bowl season in 10 years.
The Big 10 had 3 teams finish with more than 11 wins.
The big 10 won 2 BCS games
The Big East played 40 Out of conference games this year and 6 bowl games. In those 46 games, they beat 0 ranked teams.
The Big East's 2nd and 3rd place teams lost to The ACC's 7th and 11th place teams.

[The Ancient Enemy]

None of that counts, Kirk. You didn't use a math formula to try and make a case as to why your conference is comparable to others that have 4 more members 6 times the prestige.

[El-Moldo]

Alright, let's try THIS analogy. There are 14 wrestlers on a high school wrestling team. You have 3 which are top notch wrestlers. You have 3 which are basically good. But you have 8 which are not good, all of which LOSE more often than they win and have less than a .500 record. Is this TEAM considered good, when compared to schools that have a more solid roster from top to bottom? Which team will win the most matches? Which is the more formidible opponent? In the Big Ten, just because you have 3 teams in the top 10, doesn't mean you have a good conference. This shows up in the Sagarin ratings, which places the Big Ten 6th among college football conferences. The sad thing is, they were 6th last year too. Meanwhile, the Big East went from 5th in 2008 to 2nd in 2009. This is an amazing achievement.

[The Ancient Enemy]

The Big East is so awesome.

[KirkHerbstreit]

Let me tell you why your analogy stinks. Do High School wrestling teams wrestle 66% of their matches against each other? You realize that the Majority of these teams losses came from playing teams in their conference that were more powerful than them. Let's user your wrestling example

You have 4 top notch wrestlers who beat the crap out of your other wrestlers on your team giving them 4 losses each. This gives these other wrestlers limited room for error. Now, your 4 top wrestlers go beat top 4 wrestlers on other teams proving 1) they are really good wrestlers and 2) the other wrestlers on their team had it tough and already have 4 losses because they are tough to beat.

I will use a better analogy to explain the big East Conference. There is a beauty contest with the following contestants Miss Virginia(Va Tech), Miss Miami(The U), Miss Boston(Boston College), Miss Johnstown(West Virginia), Miss Ebensburg(Pitt), Miss Bedford(Rutgers), and Miss Portage(Syracuse). Sadly, Miss Virginia, Miss Miami, and Miss Boston drop out of the beauty contest. However, they are replaced by Miss Wilmore Heights(South Florida), Miss Carroltown(Uconn), Miss Vinco(Cincinnatti), and Miss Creslo(Louisville). Suddenly, Miss Johnstown looks extremely hot and wins the beauty contest, but doesn't fare well in other beauty contests. The End.