College Football: Pac-12 Dominance?

The 2013-2014 college football season is coming to a close; that means it's bowl season. The biggest story, according to the mainstream media, is that this is the final year of the much-debated BCS (aka Bowl Championship Series). However, I'm here to bring to your attention to something new I just uncovered: the Pac-12 is favored in each of it's 9 bowl games. This, even though we only have 7 bowl-commitments.

So, to recap: 75% of the conference is in a bowl game (28% above our commitment rate), and each of those teams is favored against it's opponent. Yes, I think that counts as dominance.


7 comments:

  1. If I find time, I'd like to look into other conferences for the same stats: % of conference in a bowl game (variance to commitments) & % favored...

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  2. Don't spend too much time...just compare it to the SEC.

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  3. Alright, the SEC has a whopping 10 bowl commitments, and placed 10 teams into bowl games. [side note: the ACC placed in 11 games?]

    Of those games, the SEC is favored in 8 of them. I'd argue their opponents are strong than the Pac-12 opponents.

    Are there conference rankings anywhere?

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  4. This is a great breakdown. What we've learned - the SEC is really, really good. When you factor in their overall rankings, as well, that conference is just plain scary. We can basically pencil them into at LEAST one of the four playoff slots from now til eternity.

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  5. So, the Pac-12 finished 6-3 (both SU and ATS), which isn't too shabby. The concerning part for me is that our two division winners (ASU & Stanford) lost - with the ASU lost being the most damaging to the conference.

    I'll wrap up the SEC performance after Monday's championship game.

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  6. The numbers are in. The SEC finished the bowl season 7-3 SU, and 6-4 ATS. I'd argue this was an equal performance to the Pac-12.

    When you look at overall conference performance, it's clear that the Pac-12 & SEC are heads and shoulders above the rest. While the ACC had 11 teams join, they finished 5-6. In fact, the only other conference to finish above .500 was the Sun Belt, which finished at 2-0.

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