The Big Ten is the Second Best Conference in the country – and i can prove it

Earlier today, I was on a site that was talking about historical rankings and if it would be a down year for the Big Ten. They plugged in some numbers and came up with the fact that we actually are the same as last year, and that the conference is better than 2007. In the comments, somebody suggested adding weight to the numbers to find the best conference, and I did so.

To figure this out, I assigned a number to each place. BCS spot #1 was 25 points, #2 was 24, and on it went:

1. 25
2. 24
3. 23
4. 22
5. 21
6. 20
7. 19
8. 18
9. 17
10. 16
11. 15
12. 14
13. 13
14. 12
15. 11
16. 10
17. 9
18. 8
19. 7
20. 6
21. 5
22. 4
23. 3
24. 2
25. 1

I then plugged in the numbers, converted them, and added them up:

1. SEC – 1 (25), 2 (24), 9 (17), 24 (2) = 68
2. Big Ten – 6 (20), 13 (13), 19 (7), 21 (5) = 45
3. ACC- 10 (16), 12 (14), 14 (12) = 42
4. Pac Ten – 7 (19), 11 (15), 22 (4) = 38
5. Big 12 – 3 (23), 15 (11), 25 (1) = 35
6. MWC – 8 (18), 16 (10), 18 (7) = 35
7. Big East – 5 (21), 20 (6), 23 (3) = 30
8. WAC – 4 (22) = 22
9. CUSA – 17 (9) = 9

Basically, it looks as though the SEC is indeed the strongest conference, which everybody expected. A surprise is that the Big Ten is next, followed by the ACC and the Pac Ten. The Big 12, which everybody seems to love, is 5th, tied with the MWC. This was very surprising, and is actually counter-intuitive. I am planning on running this each week now, and might move this over to my blogcritics series on OSU sooner or later.