Are teams more prone to lose a bowl game after losing a conference championship? SMQ digs into the numbers from 1992 to the present.
Conference championship games are a relatively recent phenomenon. Last year marked a quarter-century since the concept first came to life with the inauguration of the SEC Championship Game in 1992. The idea slowly became more popular over time, until it became the standard among FBS leagues.
Up until that moment when the SEC first formed a conference title game, conferences were decided solely on regular-season standings. Whoever ended up with the best conference record was declared the champion. As we saw in the Sun Belt, the last FBS conference without a championship game as of 2017, that often led to split conference championships.
The one-off nature of title games raises its own issues, of course. Upsets can ruin a league’s chance of reaching major bowl games. We have seen this over the years in both major conferences and mid-major leagues. During the BCS era, several smaller schools were denied entry into a BCS bowl game based on a loss in the conference championship. Upsets have also knocked some national championship hopefuls out of the race, relegating them to postseason exhibitions in the process.
So how do conference championship game losers fare in bowl games?
Fans are most often concerned with the team that wins a conference title game. After all, this year’s Power Five title game losers — Auburn, Miami, Wisconsin, TCU, and Stanford — ended the dreams of realizing bigger goals. The Tigers, Hurricanes, and Badgers all saw College Football Playoff dreams fall by the wayside. TCU and Stanford lost an opportunity to claim an at-large bid into a New Year’s Six bowl game.
This week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback compiles the results of the following bowl game for every team that has lost a conference championship game since they first became a thing in 1992. Not every league is created equal in this regard, as the losing finalists from some leagues fare better than others in their postseason appearances.
Keep reading to see the breakdown for each conference in the final regular-season edition of Sunday Morning Quarterback from the 2017 season.