# College Football Conferences

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-football-conferences/39924>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 6, 2000, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-football-conferences/39924 "2000-11-06T10:14:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Alantus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a6a055/32.png) [@Alantus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alantus)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2000, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-football-conferences/39924/1 "2000-11-06T10:14:03Z")

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Being from the Deep South where college football was my primary religion for many years, I firmly believe that SEC football is far superior than the rest. This is an opinion. After living in other parts of the country and getting into debates quite a few times about how the quality of football sucks in the rest of the country I started to look for ways to compare the quality of football among conferences. Alot of folks think that if Nebraska plays good football on 3 days a year and goes undefeated then they are the best. I tend to disagree.

The only way I can come up with a decent comparison is through Bowl game records. Is this the best way to compare? Is there really any other way? I need to ask since my favorite conference has a pretty good looking winning percentage in bowl games. This being the case my willingness to accept this viewpoint might be tainted.

Any thoughts?

Alantus

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**Author:** ![Mullinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@Mullinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mullinator)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2000, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-football-conferences/39924/2 "2000-11-06T13:06:34Z")

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You might also want to look at the records teams have with common opponents. If Florida beats Michigan State by 25, but UCLA beats them by 31 then just maybe UCLA has a better team that year then UF. If UCLA then has troubles in the PAC-10 but UF goes relativley unscathed through the SEC, the PAC 10 may be a better conference. Of course, that sounds like a whole lot of work to prove to yourself that your conference is the champion of a contest that doens’t really exist.

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2000, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-football-conferences/39924/3 "2000-11-06T13:39:27Z")

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And if Georgia Tech beats Cumberland by 222-0, they’re the greatest college football team ever.

In other words, comparative scores are meaningless. Only head-to-head competition proves anything.