Can you judge a conference based on its bowl game success?

Question

I say NO. I think its ridiculous that these teams go on average 4 weeks between their last scheduled game and their bowl game, and yet people point to the bowl records as a legit way to judge a conference. I know that some will say its the only way to judge, but honestly Ive seen numerous bowl games where a team lost due to either layoff, or indeference (not to mention certain conferences have gerrymadered bowl mathcups; IE Pac-10 matching their 3rd against another conferences 5th). I think its silly to base a conference rank on bowl winning. Agree or disagree?

Answer 1

Since the major conferences go out of their way not to face each other during the regular season, how else do you judge? Take this year; SEC schools play a grand total of 7 games against the ACC, 3 against the Big East, none against the Big Ten, 3 against the Big Twelve, and 1 against the Pac Ten, for 14 of the 48 non-conference games. The Big Ten is even worse, since their schools play the ACC once, the Big East 3 times, the Big Twelve once, and the Pac Ten 3 times, for only 8 of their 44 non-conference games. You could look at the other conferences, but you'll see similar numbers.

Since the only time that you're going to see roughly even teams play each other is at bowl time, there really is no other way to judge.

Answer 2

according to pac-10 fans you can, but the majority of intelligent people would say no, that is no way to judge conferences, lets face it, if your not playing in the national championship, your basically playing in an over hyped exhibition game, that means nothing. last year for example: pac 10 #2 cal beat big 12 #4 Texas a&m and pac-10 #3 oregon st. beat big 12 #6 missouri (by 1 point). so the pac-10 would say look we were 2-0 vs. the big 12. when in fact their #2 and 3 should be better than the big 12 #4 and 6.

Answer 3

I agree

The Big Ten and Pac 10 end thier seasons five to six weeks before the bowl games. After that long the lose the momentum. The Big 12 and SEC play meaningless warm up games to boost their W-L records. Then they send teams with 6-6 records to the "Jimmy-Crack-Corn-Bowl" and "the Recycled-Oil Bowl" to play teams like Northwestern-East Minnesota fighting Sow Bugs, winners of the Internet Conference (south Division)

Answer 4

No. In many cases teams that are in the middle of that conference get shitty bowl opponents. A good judge is how the best teams in that conference do against the best of other conferences in BCS games.

Answer 5

I agree. Let's just rank teams. BTW, i like the coach's poll. What do sports writers really know anyway???

Answer 6

College football ranking is a sham and the NCAA is a sham!

It should be a playoff system!