I never thought LSU would win all the major men’s sports for an entire academic year, but I guess there are a lot of things going on I thought I’d never see.
I wasn’t going to write this since it’s based on a season that ended two months ago, but I have the time now, and I thought someone might want to read about the last full season we had. I am writing this on Friday, a day I originally took off in order to enjoy the first round of the basketball tournament. My last day of work for a while was Tuesday, so I may write something else in the coming days.
Anyway, I used to do conference reports more often. I would do them weekly after each of the first four weeks and then again at the end of the regular season with a final one at the end of bowl season. I thought I had done more than one, but the only one I could find was after Week 2. One reason I haven’t done them as much is I’ve been rating the conferences statistically on my ratings site. Another reason is time of course.
SEC Regular Season
The SEC did not start particularly strong. In the first two weeks, Tennessee lost twice (to Georgia St. and to BYU), Missouri lost to Wyoming, Ole Miss lost to Memphis (which turned out to be not so bad), and South Carolina lost to North Carolina. So after two weeks, I had the Big Ten higher in the conference standings.
Week 3 didn’t really change anything. Mississippi St.’s loss to Kansas St. on the road wasn’t really a shock. Arkansas beating anyone in FBS was a good thing (they beat Colorado St.). The other wins that week would have been complete surprises had they not been blowouts.
Week 4 was a little bit more encouraging with Georgia’s win over Notre Dame. Ole Miss and Arkansas lost, but those were not unexpected; both games could have gone either way.
There was nothing else of note out-of-conference until Week 11, when Appalachian St. beat South Carolina. In the mean time, Vanderbilt went 1-1 against two weak teams and Arkansas lost out of conference yet again, a blowout at the hands of Western Kentucky. At that point things were looking even worse for the SEC than at the time of my conference report.
Apart from South Carolina’s expected big loss to Clemson (the actual margin of 35 would have been a modest estimate), the SEC won the other major rivalry-week games (Florida-Florida St., Kentucky-Louisville, and Georgia-Georgia Tech) to at least put itself back in contention for best conference.
SEC Bowls
Almost every year, I talk about how the SEC is often held to unfair standards in bowl games. For instance, in 2018, LSU was in a four-way tie for third and had to play a team on a 25-game winning streak in the Fiesta Bowl. The major bowls’ going deep into the SEC leaves relatively mediocre teams in big games like the Citrus and Outback Bowls. Also, the best SEC team not in the Playoff (Georgia in 2018, almost every Alabama team that hasn’t been competing for a national championship) often has a lackluster performance based on disappointment from elimination from championship contention.
None of those seemed to be problems in this bowl season though. There were two losses that were both understandable. Auburn was in a tie for fifth and lost to a team who tied for second in a good conference in a competitive game. The only other loss was by Mississippi St., who only barely made a bowl game and had some intra-squad drama (to put it mildly) in bowl prep.
Obviously, LSU beat two conference champions. Florida, which was the runner-up in the East, beat Virginia, which was the runner-up in the entire ACC. Georgia beat Baylor in a matchup of conference runners-up. Alabama capitalized on a rare favorable matchup for the SEC when the Tide played fifth-place Michigan of the Big Ten.
In another SEC-Big Ten matchup, Tennessee beat seventh-place Indiana. In record, the Volunteers were tied for fifth in the SEC, but I think when you consider that the Vols played in the (weaker) SEC East while the Hoosiers played in the (stronger) Big Ten East, it was a fair fight.
Texas A&M beat Oklahoma St. to complete the sweep of the Big XII, and Kentucky beat Virginia Tech to make the SEC 3-1 against the ACC in bowl games.
SEC vs. Big Ten and Pac-12
The fact that the SEC had as many wins over the Big Ten as they had total losses in bowl games was a good start. The Big Ten lost four of its last five bowl games including both “New Years Six” bowls against major-conference opponents.
The Pac-12, who won one of those NY6 games against the Big Ten, had a good bowl showing, but they have a really weak collection of bowl games and did not have a strong enough showing against other conferences during the season.
So the SEC, despite all the bumps in the road early on, ended up the clear winner. By my count, the SEC went 17-8 against games against the major conferences (and Notre Dame). No one else finished more than one game over .500 in such games (and that was the Pac-12, which went 8-7).
Other than the Rose Bowl game I mentioned, the Pac-12 didn’t really beat anyone to write home about. These are the seven other wins: Florida St., Northwestern, Nebraska, Michigan St., Illinois, Texas Tech, and Ole Miss.
The Big Ten beat USC, Auburn, and Notre Dame and has such excusable losses as Alabama, Oregon, and Clemson. So despite the bowl record, I’m still going with the Big Ten as #2 over #3 Pac-12.
Other Major Conferences and the American Conference
The Big XII had a similar record to the Pac-12 but with an even less impressive list of wins, so that was an easy choice for #4.
The American conference is next. The AAC only suffered two losses that were not against a top conference or Notre Dame. Only two of the losses that were to teams in major conferences (Georgia Tech and North Carolina St.) were to teams that did not make bowl games. There wasn’t a list of great wins, but American teams did beat two major-conference bowl teams despite not having much chance at such wins in the bowl games themselves.
The ACC had a bad record (6-19) against other major conferences and only went .500 against the FBS. Other than Clemson’s major wins, the only others are the ones I mentioned by North Carolina and Louisville.
Remaining Conferences and Independents
That’s still more than #7 Mountain West has to brag about. The Mountain West had a better record against major conferences but only beat two major-conference teams who made bowl games (Washington St. and Florida St.). The MWC also lost ten games against other conferences to the ACC’s six.
The Sun Belt, which went 4-9 against the major conferences, is next. Those wins include North Carolina and Tennessee, which both made bowl games. Only two of the losses to the major conferences were to non-bowl teams. The Sun Belt also lost to ten teams in other conferences, but two of those were to Memphis, which made a NY6 bowl.
Obviously, independents aren’t officially a conference, but I’d count them next. Notre Dame got a lot more decent wins than all the other teams combined, but there were BYU’s wins over Tennessee and USC. Those were the only wins not by Notre Dame over major-conference teams though. It also didn’t really help the Irish that five of its wins were against the ACC. Other wins were over Stanford, Bowling Green, and New Mexico. Virginia and USC were good wins though.
The bottom of the barrel are the CUSA and MAC. I have to go with the MAC last given its single win against a major-conference team (albeit a bowl team, Illinois). Ten games There were nine wins against others, including a couple of bowl teams, so it wasn’t all bad. The CUSA had three wins against the major teams, two against U. Miami, which made a bowl game. It had 12 wins against other teams, including multiple additional bowl teams.
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