The college season is done.
With the NCAA landscape looking more and more different on a weekly basis because of conference realignment, it’s time to take a look at which conferences are going to reign supreme for the foreseeable future and which ones are going to fall short of glory. With the power five in jeopardy of becoming a power four, here’s how each conference stacks up compared to one another.
Lets take a look at Ranking Every FBS College Football Conference From WORST To FIRST.
10. Mid-American
The MAC puts the mid in Mid-American. The best players to come out of the MAC include Antonio Gates and James Harrison, both of whom went to Kent State which is far and away the best school in the worst program in FBS college ball. The program went 4-2 in bowl season with no teams finishing in the Top 25. Eight teams finished below .500 in 2022, but the conference did have some highlights through the season. Toledo won the conference by beating Ohio in the conference championship game, leading the Rockets to finish the season 9-5. The team also handed Liberty its first-ever bowl game loss with a 21-19 win in the Boca Raton Bowl in Florida. The brightest spot for the MAC is its 66.7% winning percentage in bowl games this year.
9. PAC-12
The PAC-12 has been butchered, slaughtered, and now sits in shambles with only four teams remaining in the once legendary conference. First, Oregon and Washington were approved by the Big Ten as future members of the conference. The Ducks and Huskies will move to the Big Ten on Aug. 2, 2024. Hours later, the Big 12 poached three Pac-12 programs, accepting Arizona, Arizona State and Utah into the conference beginning in the 2024-25 athletic season. Only four schools remain in the conference, Washington State University, Oregon State University, University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University are the four remaining PAC-12 schools which have not announced any conference changes.
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Rumors still swirl about the conference’s future with many speculating that a merger with the Mountain West is impending. Only time will tell what the future has in store for the once dominant west coast conference.
8. Conference USA
Conference USA went 3-3 in 2023 bowl games, but the best parts of their conference were poached to reload the American Athletic Conference. The sad conference is now highlighted by Liberty University, New Mexico State, Louisiana Tech, and the Univesity of Texas at El Paso. Western Kentucky is the only school remaining in C-USA that finished with a 6-2 conference record or better last season and the school finished with no Top 25 teams.
7. Mountain West
Despite only putting up one Top 25 team to end the season (Fresno State, 24) and a 3-4 bowl game record in the 2022 season, the Mountain West had three teams finish with 10 wins in Boise State, Fresno State and Air Force. Fresno State, the best of the conference, is the only school that could realistically compare to the top conferences and their players. The 10-4 finish marked a turnaround from where Fresno State started the year. The Bulldogs won 35-7 in the season opener, but then lost their next four to Oregon State, USC, Connecticut and Boise State. Fresno State then won its last nine games and the bowl win let the Bulldogs finish with the biggest in-season turnaround in FBS history.
6. Sun Belt Conference
The Sun Belt is the American’s little brother — the American is what the Sun Belt thinks it is. Or that could just be the Appalachian State University fans talking. The Sun Belt finished 3-4 in bowl games and had one Top 25 team at the end of the season (Troy, 19). The Sun Belt, deemed the “Fun Belt” by many, had quite a few teams deliver shocking upsets to upper echelon programs with two teams finishing with double-digit wins in Troy and South Alabama. James Madison University was ineligible for a bowl game due to regulations in its status as an FBS school, but the team had a fiery first year at the FBS level.
Having a 3-4 bowl record with seven teams finishing below .500 isn’t great, but App State nearly knocked off UNC in Week 1 and Marshall upset then No. 8 Notre Dame in the Irish’s home opener, winning 26-21 in a game where the Green Herd were 20.5 point underdogs.
5. American Athletic Conference
With the PAC-12’s disintegration, the AAC is poised to position itself as the fifth finger on a Power Five hand, even if it is the Power Five pinky. The conference finished 4-3 in bowl games, including a New Years game win for No. 9 Tulane who delivered one of the most shocking upsets of bowl season, beating USC in the Cotton Bowl. Tulane’s No. 9 ranking in the final AP poll marked the first and highest ranking since the Green Wave’s last 12-win season in 1998. Just four teams finished below .500 with the conference’s .571 win percentage during bowl season was the third-highest, too. The conference once again proved itself as the big brother to the Sun Belt Conference after ECU defeated Coastal Carolina in the Birmingham Bowl in a 53-29 victory that was never even close.
After the season, Cincinnati, Houston, and Central Florida left for the Big 12, leaving behind Tulane, East Carolina University, and Southern Methodist University to headline the conference. The American did, however, pick up the best C-USA had to offer in UTSA, FAU, UAB, and North Texas.
4. Atlantic Coastal Conference
The ACC seemingly flies under the radar in terms of football conference power rankings, but the conference accumulated a 5-4 bowl game record and three teams in the Top 25 (Florida State, 11, Clemson, 13, and Pittsburgh, 22). For a conference that recently put up national titles, 2022 was another down year for the ACC. For the second straight season, the conference was left out of the playoffs. Clemson won the ACC title with its 39-10 victory over the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but the Tigers’ losses to Notre Dame and South Carolina kept them out of the playoff. UNC entered the game already having three losses, so there was no way the Tar Heels could have made it in with a win over the Tigers. Florida State finished 10-3 and Duke had its best season since 2014, finishing 9-4 with a Military Bowl win over UCF.
Despite having five teams, Clemson, UNC, Syracuse, Wake Forest and NC State, ranked in the preseason Top 25 rankings, just Clemson, FSU and NC State were in the playoff’s final ranking before the semifinals. Clemson and NC State both lost in their bowl games, knocking the Wolfpack out all together. It is worth mentioning that the ACC is the only major conference that didn’t shake up its teams, which is important to recognizing why the teams above the conference are where they are.
3. Big 10
The first member of the future’s big three conferences, the Big 10 finished 5-4 in bowl games, but also had three schools finish in the top ten (Michigan, 3, Ohio State, 4, and Penn State, 7). The conference obviously had a good year, finishing with half the playoff’s spots. Both Michigan and Ohio State lost in the semifinals, but both were close games and both teams deserved to be in the playoffs. If Ohio State was a little more straight on its 50-yard field goal attempt against Georgia at the end of the game, the Buckeyes would have faced Texas Christian University in the national title game instead of the Bulldogs. The conference had five teams finish below .500 in Michigan State, Indiana, Rutgers, Nebraska and Northwestern. However, the only program that looks like a dumpster fire next year is Northwestern with all its hiccups and scandals.
2. Big 12
If one conference can compare to the all-mighty SEC, it’s the new look Big 12. A bowl game record of 2-7 in 2022 is not indicative of the conference’s future as the league picked up the best of the American and picked off pieces of the PAC-12 to create a new super conference. TCU, 2, Kansas State, 14, and the University of Texas, 25, all finished in the Top 25. This was still a very successful year for the conference, having a national title game representative for the first time since Texas in 2005. Yes, TCU was dogwalked by Georgia, but nonetheless getting there was an accomplishment.
TCU was college football’s Cinderella in 2022. After going 5-7 in 2021, the Horned Frogs, under first-year head coach Sonny Dykes, shocked the world as they finished the regular season undefeated before losing to Kansas State in overtime of the Big 12 title game. That didn’t knock the Horned Frogs out of the playoff, and the team was an underdog against Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal. Despite the incredible 200-1 odds in the preseason, TCU made it all the way. On the negative side, the conference’s 2-7 mark in bowl season, the worst in the country, helped cause the Big 12 to finish with five teams below .500, but again, the Big 12’s shine is in its future.
1. Southeastern Conference
The biggest of big dogs in college football is the SEC. The conference finished 7-5 in bowl games and had a slew of teams finishing in the Top 25, including Georgia, 1, Alabama, 5, Tennessee, 6, LSU, 16, Mississippi State, 20, and South Carolina 23. What is there to say about the SEC that the media hasn’t already said? You can’t be surprised at which conference is No. 1, right? The conference just hoisted its fourth consecutive national title, but Georgia is just the start for the SEC.
Although Alabama and Tennessee had two losses, meaning they missed out on the playoff, both won their New Year’s Six bowl games. Alabama beat Kansas State 45-20 in the Sugar Bowl while Tennessee beat Clemson 31-14 in the Orange Bowl. Tennessee had a magical season, highlighted by upsetting Alabama for the first time in 16 years. LSU had a big season under first-year head coach Brian Kelly. The Tigers won the SEC West and upset Alabama in overtime during the regular season. The Tigers’ 10-4 mark is their best since their national title season in 2019. Several teams had down years, however. Florida finished 6-7 in Billy Napier’s first season and Texas A&M finished below .500 for the first time since 2009. Auburn and Missouri also finished below .500. For now, and for the foreseeable future, though, the SEC is king.
