Ranking the Conferences from a Betting Angle
by T.O. Whenham
By now you have heard comparisons between the BCS conferences a million times. You know that the SEC is very strong yet again this year, the Pac-10, Big 12 and Big East are largely as solid as expected, the Big Ten has been exposed as a fraud at the top end, and the ACC is just plain pathetic. There's nothing new to be gained by rehashing that. What can be interesting and valuable, though, is to rank the conferences from a betting perspective. The rankings are quite different when you look at how teams fare against the spread.
It's particularly useful to look at the ATS records of the conferences at this point in the season. There has been very little conference play at this point, so the rankings are more meaningful now than they will be a month from now. The rankings at this point also give us a good sense of what the public perceptions were coming in to the season, and how teams are measuring up to those expectations.
1. Pac-10, 11-6 ATS. The conference that the east coast likes to forget has looked great on the field for the most part this year, and they have looked even better at the betting window. USC and UCLA were expected to be very solid, but the obvious surprises have been a bit further down the pecking order. Washington is 2-0 thanks to the faster than expected development of Jake Locker, and no one could have expected Oregon to be as dominantly undefeated as they are. UCLA has lived up to their haughty expectations with a 2-0 ATS mark. The only team that has so far disappointed against expectations this year is USC, and one lackluster game against a meaningless opponent is not exactly a reason to panic yet. It will be interesting to see if the conference can keep up the pace now that they are getting national attention and the public will discover the talented teams in the middle of the conference standings.
2. Big East, 7-4 ATS. You could reasonably argue that this conference has been better than their record indicates. Two of their four ATS losses came thanks to Syracuse, and you would have to have a really good reason to bet on Syracuse the way they have played for most of the decade. Beyond that, the only two teams that haven't paid off bettors are Louisville and West Virginia. Neither is very surprising, given the expectations the two programs came into the season with. What has been somewhat surprising is the fact that Rutgers is 2-0 ATS. The team came into the season as the ultimate public team after their fairytale season last year, but they have been so dominant that even over-inflated spreads can't hold them back.
3. Big 12, 12-9 ATS. Public opinion, and obvious fact, tells us that the South division is the dominant group, and the North is the poor cousin. The betting records don't back up that hypothesis. The North is 6-4 ATS, while the South is a slightly worse 6-5. Missouri has been the star of the North with a 2-0 ATS record. In the South the results would fuel a bitter rivalry - the teams from the state of Oklahoma (3-1 ATS) are well ahead of the state of Texas (2-3 ATS). Oklahoma, at 2-0 ATS, has been somewhat surprising for some in that few people would have expected QB Sam Bradford to be as potent as he has been early on.
4. Big Ten, 8-8 ATS. The conference's betting performance has been a perfect reflection of the performance on the field - they are perfectly mediocre. There has been some bright lights - Iowa, Penn State, Indiana and Purdue have combined to go 6-0 ATS. The consistent thread shared by all of those teams is that they have been better than they were expected to be coming in to the season, or at least they haven't been bitter disappointments like the supposedly mighty top three in the conference. Everyone knows what a mess Michigan has been, and though Wisconsin and Ohio State have been better, they certainly haven't been inspiring. No one expected that those three teams would come through the cupcake portion of the schedule at 1-3 ATS.
5. SEC, 9-10 ATS. No one wants to play most of the SEC teams on the field, and it looks like people shouldn't want to bet on them, either. The East Division (5-4 ATS) is narrowly profitable, and the lack of big wins can't be blamed on one team - only Vanderbilt is below .500 ATS, and they are just 0-1. The West Division is more disappointing with a 4-6 ATS tally. Both Auburn and Mississippi can be blamed for much of the problem, since both squads are 0-2 ATS. It's notable that Alabama and LSU, two teams that a have had a lot of public attention for very different reasons, are 3-0 ATS.
6. ACC, 8-13 ATS. With the exception of Boston College and Georgia Tech this conference has generally been pretty lousy on the field, and they have been really lousy to bet on. If you take out the 2-0 ATS record of BC and the Yellow Jackets' 1-0 ATS mark, the rest of the conference is just 5-13 ATS. Ouch. Florida State came into the season with high expectations, but is 0-2 ATS to date. The entire state of Virginia has yet to reward their backers with a winning ticket - Virginia and the Hokies are 0-4 ATS. The numbers get even uglier when you look closer. The teams have already played four conference games, so the teams have combined for a 4-9 ATS mark outside of the ACC. This conference has a lot to do to rebuild their national reputation.
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