Pac-12 conference doesn’t fare well in comparison


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One of the biggest discussions in college football is how do the power five conferences—the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 rank. There is not much dispute as to who the best conference is top to bottom—the SEC. The SEC, who had won seven straight national championships before Florida State won it last year, has become a measure of how good college football teams really are.

There is no debate that the teams that have had success in the SEC — Alabama, Auburn, LSU — are at the top of the food chain, and it is widely agreed that the Big Ten is a struggling conference with many mediocre teams partly based on their performance against the SEC in bowl games the past decade or so. Furthermore, most people believe the Big 12 Conference is strong seeing as Missouri and Texas A&M came from the Big 12 to the SEC and immediately began contending for conference titles. Texas A&M was a top ten team their first year in the conference featuring a big win at No. 1 Alabama, and Missouri won the SEC East their second year in the conference. But what about the Pac-12?

Although the argument itself over who the best conference is difficult to make, it is especially difficult to measure where the Pac-12 stands. They rarely go head-to-head against the SEC. There are no bowls that pitt the two conferences against each other. The last time they did was in the intense 2011 BCS National Championship that resulted in a close 22-19 win for Auburn over Oregon. Fortunately for college football fans, the new four-team playoff will encourage more head-to-head Pac-12 vs. SEC matchups. For example, USC is set to play Alabama in the 2016 Cowboys Classic.

Another way one could try to determine how the Pac-12 fares in college football is by looking at it’s bowl record the past few years, but it really does not make the picture any clearer. In general it is difficult to discern a whole conference’s strength based on it’s teams performances in bowl games. Weaker teams in a conference may play well while the stronger ones may struggle and vice versa.

In addition, the games are not always equally; often times a relatively strong team from one conference will play a relatively weak one from another conference. Nonetheless, it is really one of the only ways to compare the conferences. Last year, (the 2013-2014 season) the Pac-12 finished 6-3, but it’s two division champions, Arizona State and Stanford, both lost their bowl games, including a Rose Bowl loss for Pac-12 champions Stanford.

In the 2012-2013 season, although the Pac-12 won its BCS bowl games (Oregon won the Fiesta Bowl and Stanford won the Rose Bowl), the conference was 2-4 in its other bowl games. During the 2011-2012 bowl season, the conference went 2-5. Looking at the big picture it would seem that the conference is on an upward trend toward the top of college football the past three years, but the performing of the better teams of the conference in the big games seem to contradict that.

So, if we were to rate the power five conferences from strongest to weakest, where would the Pac-12 be? One could make a strong case that the Pac-12 is better than the Big Ten right now, since the Big Ten seems to struggle every bowl season, and because the Big Ten powerhouses are all suffering from early season losses, including Michigan State who lost to Oregon.

Many analysts thought that game featured the Pac-12’s best against the Big Ten’s best, and Oregon came away with a 47-26 win. The Pac-12 vs. Big 12, ACC, and SEC arguments are more difficult to make. Last bowl season, the Pac-12 went 2-0 against the ACC with a combined 52 point win margin between the two games, but the ACC is on the rise after it overthrew the SEC with a national championship last year and has had some big nonconference showings and wins to begin this year including a win for what many believed would be a mediocre Boston College team against a top ten Pac-12 opponent in USC.

The Pac-12 vs. Big 12 argument is equally as confusing looking at their bowl records against one another. Last year in bowl games the Pac-12 was 1-1 against the Big 12. The year before the Pac-12 went 1-2 against the Big 12, but the one win for the Pac-12 was a match between the two conference champions, Oregon and Kansas State; Oregon won fairly handily 35-17. Most likely, the conference is better than the Big Ten, not quite as strong as the SEC, but somewhere in between with the ACC and Big 12. Hopefully, the arrival of the four-team playoff will help clear the conference debate up for college football fans.