What Does a Conference’s Bowl Record Really Mean?

In the arena of college football, pride is everything. Hate for one’s rival is almost as gratifying as the love for one’s school and we all look for a reason to say that our team and, in extension, our conference is as good as, or better than, or not as bad as someone else’s.

Every year at this time, we get a whole new round of qualifiers (or excuses depending on where your interest lies) in the form of bowl records.

But can we really derive how good a conference is based on bowl outcomes?

Before we try to answer that question, let’s look at what we’ve learned so far during bowl season.

With all inter-conference bowl games now in the books, we’ve got a good picture of how each of the P5 teams held their own against teams from rival leagues. We already broke down each conference’s postseason win-loss record. Now here’s a look at the scoring margin for each Power 5 conference (Alabama and Georgia can’t affect this number in the title game since they’re both from the same league).

Inter-Conference Bowl Scoring Margin

By the numbers, the Big 12 has been the second-best league this bowl season. That is a fact. By win percentage against other leagues and point differential. No. 1 in scoring offense, No. 2 in scoring defense and scoring margin. These numbers also highlight how dominant the Big Ten has been in postseason play this year and how badly the Pac-12’s year was.

Of course, not all bowl games are created equal so ranking the conferences based on a simple win-loss record doesn’t necessarily tell us which league is best. (The Big Ten has the best record but no playoff team, and the SEC will be third-best among P5 leagues but owns both sides of the national title matchup.)

Does Kansas State beating up on a UCLA team without a head coach really pump up anyone’s perception of the Big 12? Does having a losing bowl record but winning yet another national championship not do the same for the SEC?

This powerhouse we know as college football is as fickle as it is lucrative. In a business where perception is reality and money drives everything, it’s almost impossible to find an absolute truth. Team A beat Team B so X conference is better than Y. That’s not a hard fact. There are various determining factors that go into the outcome of one game — especially in the postseason — and most of those fall away when you realize that “better” is pretty much always subjective anyway.

It’s the reason the CFP committee and its weekly rankings have become such a fiasco, and must-see TV. Kudos to ESPN for finding a way to monetize the spectacle. The eye test. Which team do we think is better? Who has gathered the data point du jour?

Is a team better because it plays a certain style that you prefer? Is it based solely on metrics? Strength of schedule? We don’t know because in the current format, there is no rule book!

Additionally, in bowl games the point is always posited that one team might “want it more.” Which team wants to be there and which view the exhibition as merely a consolation prize? And those questions will be further compounded as more and more players exercise their right to sit out of bowls in lieu of the impact on a future pro career.

The games can seem frivolous and the luster of making the postseason has been dulled by the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowls and the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowls of the world.

So how do you grade a conference? The strength of its teams at the top? Its overall depth? These bowl games? Is it a conglomeration of all of these? The truth is that it’s virtually impossible to completely quantify how each conference ranks among the others because leagues and their schedules are incommensurate.

But we need a winner. We need a “better” and regardless of which camp you’re in, I believe the bowl games have to at least be a big part of the puzzle. If we gloss over the on-field results, regardless of our what we think we know about the mindset of the players involved, then why even play the games? Let’s just send both teams on a paid vacation to Orlando.

Wins and losses do mean something. Otherwise, what’s the point? Run it past the eye test, count up the style points and by all means let your bias guide you. But don’t ignore the bowl games.