SMQ: Is there an increasing divide developing in college football’s Power 5?

With the first College Football Playoff rankings about to be released on Tuesday, let’s think about relative power in the hierarchy of the Power Five.

When the first College Football Playoff rankings were released by the selection committee in 2014, three SEC teams graced the top four spots and four of the top six positions in the initial rankings for the year. Over time, Auburn and then Ole Miss and finally Mississippi State all faded from the picture, until only Alabama remained at the top of the hierarchy.

Yet in one of the deepest years for the SEC in ages, the league failed to win the national championship as Big Ten champion Ohio State took advantage of the new plus-one format to upset the Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl and then topple Oregon in the national championship game. Since then, however, there has been no abatement in the perception of the SEC as the premier conference in college football.

That perception has been largely warranted, thanks to a league that continues to produce national contenders year after year. With Tennessee, LSU, Florida, Auburn, and Alabama all winning national championships since the BCS era launched in 1998, and Georgia playing for the national title within the past few years, the SEC’s rise to the top conference in the country is hardly the product of one dynastic team or even divisional imbalance.

When Alabama falls out of contention, for instance, there is always a team like Auburn to step into the vacuum (that they usually created for themselves).

Compare that to the ACC, where the rise of Florida State under Jimbo Fisher at the end of the BCS era and then Clemson under Dabo Swinney in the College Football Playoff days has increased the public perception of the league. But that perception has come at the expense of a conference that has been incredibly top-heavy and reliant on one dominant program at a given time to rise above the fray and play their way into the national picture.

The inability of formerly dominant programs like Miami and Virginia Tech in the ACC Coastal has prevented the league from having high-ranked conference championship matchups that could tip the scales further in their favor. Thus, when the primary hope falters, there is no secondary challenger to rise to the occasion.

Over the next few weeks, Sunday Morning Quarterback is going to tackle this critical question: Is there an increasing divide that is splitting the Power Five into a two-tiered hierarchy of hopefuls and the hopeless?

To examine this subject, we will tackle the topic from a variety of angles such as recruiting, revenue generation, coaching salaries, and overall expenditures on football. This week we tackle the question of the conference championship game and how that 13th data point impacts teams disproportionately depending on which league they consider home.

First, one thing to consider when looking at championship games

There are a few things worth keeping in mind as we dive into this look at conference championship games. First and foremost, just as they are of variable quality there is also a variable history of conference championships. The SEC title game, for instance, has been running continuously since 1992. By comparison, the Big Ten and Pac-12 only came online with conference championship games in 2011.

Those divergent fortunes make the most meaningful comparisons those that fall along averages rather than anecdotes. In all instances there are disparities and outliers, but in general these averages hew to the standards produced by each league for their champion and vanquished division winner from year to year.

Think of this as one piece of the puzzle rather than a complete causal descriptor of why a disparity might be developing among Power Five conferences.

Now, to the Power Five conference championships themselves

With that caveat out of the way, let’s examine this puzzle piece more closely to see what it can reveal.

That precedent of providing high-quality opponents in a major championship contest has been a staple of the SEC almost since the beginning. We see that manifest itself in the high average ranking of the conference champion, which has on average entered the game with an 11-1 record and a top-four ranking in the BCS or College Football Playoff rankings. Their opponents are usually within the top 11 of the rankings, boasting a 10-2 record in the regular season. The combined rank of the two SEC championship game participants is 15.0.

Among the rest of the Power Five teams in the country, the Big 12 is second on that list. Considering they operated a conference championship game for 15 years from 1996 to 2010, it makes some sense that the Big 12 would have a similar trajectory. Over time, their conference champion has averaged a rank between No. 5 and No. 6, with the losing team in the top 10 as well. A team with only one loss usually ends up toppling a two-loss opponent, a narrative quite similar to the SEC.

From there, the Big Ten has been the best league among the other three. On average, the No. 8 team plays the No. 9 team in the contest with the two teams boasting 10 or 11 victories. Only the SEC division champions boast a better combined winning percentage than the Big Ten title game participants, showing the depth that is available in the league. What hurt the Big 12 in 2014, the argument went, was the lack of a definitive championship game to determine whether Baylor or TCU deserved recognition as the king of the league. (Never mind that head-to-head Bears win.)

Fourth among the Power Five leagues is the Pac-12, which has suffered from a weak South division since expanding to a dozen teams in 2011. Right around that time, USC fell off the map after Pete Carroll left for the NFL, and the entire league suffered as a result. While the average title-game winner averages 10 wins on their record coming into the championship game and an average rank between No. 7 and No. 8, they play a 9-3 division winner from the opposite side of the ledger that ranks around No. 14 — when they are ranked at all.

The ACC brings up the rear. While Florida State and especially Clemson have helped mask the numbers over recent years, the longer history of the ACC championship game shows a league where upsets have been a regularity and games are often closer than they are anywhere else around the Power Five. Their conference champion ranks right around No. 10 in the country, while the vanquished foe in the title game sits at No. 14 or No. 15 — again, like the Pac-12, if the losing finalist is even ranked.

What can this tell us about the divide between Power Five leagues?

There is honestly not much to derive from performance in conference championship games as it correlates to league quality. Beyond confirming for us that the SEC has indeed been among the best conferences in the country — from increasing the quality of its matchups with balanced division success rates to keeping upsets part of the equation while mitigating their impact on the broader picture — there is little else that correlates to the expectations.

The ACC, on paper, has been the worst conference in the Power Five. Yet its conference champion has reached the College Football Playoff each of its first five years of existence, and defending champ Clemson is on track to make it six out of six. Again, however, this speaks more to the hegemonic power of having one dominant team over a balanced field of decent competitors for the crown.

The Big 12 reintroduced their championship game in 2017 after missing two of the first three College Football Playoff brackets between 2014 and 2016. Since then, Oklahoma has won the league and reached the semifinals each of the past two seasons. The Big Ten, on the other hand, has suffered instances of being shut out of the Playoff each of the past three seasons despite high-ranked, ultra-talented conference champions that fit the bill for the selection committee but couldn’t break into the semifinals.

And the Pac-12, despite seeing the favorite win year after year in both the early on-campus championship games and the series of events in Santa Clara, continues getting shut out of the Playoff. Only twice in the five years of the College Football Playoff has the Pac-12 champion made the final four. Given the relative quality of the losing finalists, that could simply be a matter of how the selection committee perceives the strength of that final data point relative to the other Power Five leagues.

This year, we have a legitimate opportunity to see the Big Ten and Pac-12 earn a spot in the Playoffs. The Big 12 still has an undefeated team alive in Baylor, and Oklahoma is hanging out on the margins waiting for their moment to reenter the race. But the SEC looks as likely as ever to land two teams in the field this season, and Clemson is on track to keep the ACC perfect in getting its conference champ into the Playoff picture.

When it comes to Power Five leagues, we have seen power concentrate in the SEC and ACC. The only two leagues that have made the Playoff each of the first five years of the system’s existence. While the longtime existence of the SEC title game can explain some of their success, though, everything about the ACC championship game points to the league being among the worst Power Five conferences rather than one of the best.

We will continue to examine this question next weekend when we look at revenue and expenditure data across schools in the November 10 edition of Sunday Morning Quarterback.