enigmaax;442456 wrote:
You said using BCS games is false logic. But your "logic" is your own personal eye test?
No, you're inferring that me throwing out BCS as the
ONLY indicator means that I think they're totally corrupt, which is false. I just think that the BCS games should be treated as any other game between two teams, they just both happen to be highly ranked.
BCS games actually tend to be the most even matchups, but you have to throw out ones that are so clearly mismatched it's not even fair.
For example: when Georgia beat the shit out of Hawaii, you have to throw that out because Hawaii's record was much inflated by a non-existent schedule. IMO any other BCS team that year would would have destroyed Hawaii as well, so while it looks good for the SEC to get a BCS win, I wouldn't use that in my calculation.
Also, you can't completely discount the talent assessment because there's no factual formula to determine conference strength. There's no single objective measure to determine conference strength, at some point subjectiveness comes into play.
So then conference strength would come down to two factors for me (I'll add another one):
1. conference record against similar opponents (which, IMO is mostly bowl season and the early season matchups that happen between mostly teams that finish between 4-6 in their conferences).
2. talent
At some point the talent level of the teams cannot be reflected by my first criteria simply because they didn't play comparable opponents from outside their own conference, so subjective measure of talent is needed.
Going back to what CBF said, when it comes down to the subjective measure of talent, that's where all of the problems start because homers and even non-homers could be biased.
What is all leads to is my final conclusion in that it's almost impossible to measure conference strength unless you rate the talent level of each team and then the overall talent level.
What that would lead to is my final conference rankings from last year of:
1. SEC
2. Big 10
3. Big 12
4. ACC
5. Pac 10
6. Big east
Now, if you went back to each and every comparable OOC and bowl game and looked at the records, they might suggest a list different than mine, which is exactly the point I'm trying to make, that it's nearly impossible to find any completely objective way of ranking conferences.