Rutgers' fall from grace (Hey, Greg, it's still likely you could coach Miami by the time Florida plays them again) was completed last night on national TV. It really got me thinking about the overall strength of the respective conferences, so here goes a (rambling) assesment...

Obviously the SEC is number 1. An interesting argument can be made that this could be a 'down year' overall for the league, with 2 schools putting in new head coaches and new QBs (Ole Miss, Arkansas), 3 additional teams with new starting QBs (Kentucky, Tennessee, LSU) and another school (Auburn) who seems to have a new QB, but at the least a completely different offense. Regardless, the overall talent level of this league is ridiculous, and much has been made of the number of national championships won by its' coaches.

The Big XII has to be #2 this year. The QB strength of this league is the deepest of all the conferences, and there are too many questions about some of the Pac-10 'contenders' to rank them here. On a usual year, I think the Big XII should be #2, though they had some down years (outside of Texas and Oklahoma recently). But based on tradition and geography, they should be a top-3 league every year, and they've easily returned to that level. Interestingly, the Pac-10 #2 plays against a lower Big XII school every year in the Holiday Bowl, and the Big XII usually wins that game. But I take that to be less a showing of conference strength, and more that the Pac-10 team in the Holiday Bowl usually has a 'let down' game (they just miss a BCS at-large and/or winning the conference over USC), most notably last year's blowout of Arizona State by Texas.

The Big Ten, as much as we like to bash it, can't be worse than the 4th best conference. Who would you rank over them, the ACC? The Mountain West? Too much has been written about the decline of this conference for me to need to go into much detail here.

As much as I ripped on the ACC earlier this year, I also can't put them lower than 5th. Sure, Duke is dreadful, and the conference has a terrible OOC record so far this year (+1 for UNC last night, though), but the Big East is REALLY bad, and non-BCS conferences are even worse when you get to the last 3-4 teams in their conference. It's trendy to say 'this is just a transition period for this league, they'll come back strong'... but I don't agree. Yes, Miami has 5 national titles. They get good ratings nationally, especially in the northeast (where all their students are from). They are in a recruiting hotbed. But SMU has the same geographic advantage, is also a private school, was at one time the dominant program nationally (though without the titles), and has fallen so far, most people in, say 1982, wouldn't believe it to be possible. They even have a fan base that shows up on gamedays through a 1-win season (i.e. much better support, attendance-wise, than Miami). I just think there too many people assume Miami has some 'right' to being a top 10 program, while it's likely IF the Randy Shannon experiment doesn't work (he has a losing record), they could really fall even further. Florida State has similar problems with attendance/fan support, and most of the rest of this league has either no football tradition (or cares way more about basketball), or are too small to have a sizeable enough fan base for television ratings/long term alumni support to be a powerhouse. I haven't looked it up, but I'm pretty sure Wake Forest is smaller than most DFW high schools. Bottom line, it's probably not nearly as bleak as I've just described, but there's enough there to reasonably think this league could be ranked 5th for the forseeable future.

I have to rank the Mountain West above the Big East. This argument would have been much better has San Diego State actually beaten Notre Dame. But really, San Diego State is terrible. Look at the top of the MWC, however: BYU, Utah, TCU. If TCU beats Stanford this weekend (a team that's moving into the top half of the Pac 10), this argument will get even stronger. However, this is mainly an argument against the Big East. This guy certainly has the right idea. To quote a Louisville blog:

On the eve of the third weekend of the 2008 college football season, the conference lays claim to a 3-8 mark against FBS schools, and an 0-4 record against other teams from BCS conferences. In the latter category, the Big East has been outscored 153-50.

Long term prospects for the Big East look worse than the Mountain West. If somehow the Mountain West did the devious-ACC thing and stole some other hot teams (Boise State, Fresno State, even Tulsa), the western shift of the population base could make the BCS stand up and take notice. Look at where the Big East teams are centered: West Virginia, Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers. NYC is NYC, but for the large part these northeast and rust belt cities are shrinking rapidly, while the south and west coast are growing. The smartest thing the Big East did (other than scheduling the big conference games toward the end of the season and on Thursdays, for more national attention) was bring in South Florida. This helped them with these trends geographically, but ultimately I don't see this league has having a significant advantage over the MWC, long term, other than their 'entitlement' to the BCS. Remember, a few years back they would have been in major trouble for not having a single team finish ranked high enough in the standings (I think a conference can actually be removed from the BCS), but got to claim Louisville, who finished in the top 10 but had played in Conference USA, as a league member and avoided that whole mess.

My main point is this: South Florida had better win tonight. Or the anti-Big East will gain even more momentum nationally, and they'll begin to run out of chances to prove their critics wrong (Auburn @ West Virginia is clearly the biggest OOC game of the year for the league). Thoughts?