SB Nation Conference Re-Draft: Scoreboard Watching

Our N.C. State bros over at Backing The Pack takes a look at the SB Nation Conference Re-Draft results through 53 picks. First, we gotta catch you all up on the Re-Draft after the Twelve Pack's Boston College pick ...

50. Colorado 
51. Oregon State 
52. Boise State
53. Vanderbilt

BTP uses F+ rankings (football) and Pomeroy averages (basketball) to determine just who's winning this thing. 

Here's how the conferences stack up when averaging last year's F+ rankings.

1. The Cult of Les Miles (Red Cup Rebellion) -- 18.9
2. Conference TMZ (Big East Coast Bias) -- 21.0
3. The Empire (Team Speed Kills) -- 31.9
4. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Black Heart Gold Pants) -- 37.4
5. House of a Thousand Sanctions (House of Sparky) -- 42.9
6. Twelve Pack (BC Interruption) -- 51.7

Whoops. There's the Twelve Pack sitting DFL in football with an average 2010 F+ rating of 51.7. Here's what BTP had to say about our conference's low F+ average:

"Our BC bros have done better on the football side than the one-year average suggests. That's one of the problems with this rough glance, as aberrant seasons help or hurt more than they should. BCI drafted Texas and Georgia, both of which had unusually poor football seasons in 2010. (Texas finished at 65 in the F/+ ratings, obviously a big exception rather than the rule.) From a pure performance standpoint, they've gotten two of the draft's biggest steals in Wisconsin and Clemson. The Badgers finished in the top 15 in both sports, while Clemson was top 25 in both."

I'll freely admit that this doesn't look good, but at least we're improving?

As BTP suggests, taking just 2010 results is a bit of a high-level swag at determining the football success of these conferences. I'd add that The Cult of Les Miles currently has one less program than every other conference, so the F+ average will go down once their ninth round pick is in the books (teams ranked 1-25 in last year's F+ rankings are now all off the board). 

If you look at 2009 F+ averages, our conference doesn't fare much better, finishing in fifth with a 41.2 average (and ahead of only Conference TMZ). 

Basketball is a different story, where the Twelve Pack has the second highest rated Pomeroy average (36) behind only House of a Thousand Sanctions (32.1).

1. House of a Thousand Sanctions -- 32.1
2. The Twelve Pack -- 36
3. Conference TMZ -- 46
4. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants -- 67.7  
5. The Empire -- 67.7
6. The Cult of Les Miles -- 93.9

Exercises like this require a bit of forward-looking projections on how you think the school and the athletic program will perform going forward. So as a conference, we haven't exactly been selecting teams based on 2010 (or 2009) results, but this seems in line with our desire to get big name programs that strike a solid balance between football and hoops. And hey, we drafted Duke so, yeah.

Excellent analysis, as always, from Backing The Pack, but we haven't been drafting with an eye towards recent success in either sport. After the jump, a look at how the conferences are stacking up against some of the other factors we have been measuring our conference up against.

Two of the big factors we have considered while picking is revenue rank (using 2007-08 figures) and TV media markets. Here's a snapshot of how the conferences stack up in these two categories:

Here you can see the types of factors our conference has weighed heavily. The Twelve Pack is currently ranked second behind The Cult of Les Miles with an average of 21.3, though again, The Cult's average will dip below 17.6 with the ninth pick as the top 18 earners are now all off the board.

The Twelve Pack does rank first in average TV market size. The distance between our conference and the House of a Thousand Sanctions would be even greater if you consider that Texas draws more viewership outside of just Austin (ranked 51), and likely does well in both Dallas/Fort Worth (5th), Houston (10th) and San Antonio (37th). The same could also be said for some of these flagship state schools that carry more than their immediate TV market, but no program seems to carry the clout that Texas does (I mean, they are even in Pakistan!).

One of the secondary considerations when drafting has been drafting strong academic programs. After we drafted Texas and Georgia 1-2, it set the pattern for future picks. Some may not see the value is selecting programs based on academics, but the general theory is: more applicants, more selective admissions, producing higher earners and churning out quality graduates, who donate more, pumping more money into these programs, etc. etc. Maintaining an academic affiliation with other highly ranked universities also helps fill the universities coffers in the form of more research and grants.

Using USN&WR's most recent National University Rankings, here is a look at how the conferences currently break down along academic lines:

1. The Twelve Pack -- 38.2
2. House of a Thousand Sanctions -- 66.3
3. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants -- 70.8
4. The Cult of Les Miles -- 79.4
5. The Empire -- 94.4
6. Conference TMZ -- 108.8

Here you can really see which conferences value academics, which ones are generally indifferent and which ones could care less. The Twelve Pack has a sizeable lead on House of a Thousand Sanctions, and Conference TMZ's 108.8 average doesn't even include Boise State (which isn't ranked in USN&WR's National Universities).

Finally, it always helps to have large on-campus football stadiums in your conference to seat all those fans and rake in even more cash. Here is the average football stadium capacities for the six conferences:

1. The Cult of Les Miles (8) -- 74,919
2. The Twelve Pack (9) -- 73,163
3. The Empire (9) -- 70,969
4. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (9) -- 70,604
5. House of a Thousand Sanctions (9) -- 68,442
6. Conference TMZ (9) -- 64,073

Again, as a conference we are doing fairly well here. With The Cult of Les Miles on the clock, that 74.9k average will likely go down, as the largest stadiums left on the board are all below the conference's average -- Tulane (72,968), San Diego State (70,561) and South Florida (65,857). The Twelve Pack has five of the top 20 largest college football stadiums in the land with Texas Memorial Stadium, Sanford Stadium, Rose Bowl, Camp Randall and Clemson's Memorial Stadium. What's even more impressive is that this conference ranks high on the football attendance scale despite taking on the second smallest football venue in the BCS (Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium).

Of course it's easy to paint a favorable picture of the Twelve Pack using factors like revenue rank, TV markets and academics as these are three big factors we have been tracking and using to make our picks. Other conferences may not see the value in using these macro factors over recent football/basketball success. To each his own.

Your thoughts on how to evaluate how each of these six conferences are shaping up? Should we use recent results as a measure of success? Revenue rank? TV markets? Academics? Facilities?