How Did the AAC Compare to Other Conferences in 2014?

With the introduction of the College Football Playoff to decide the national champion, conference scrutiny and strength of schedule debates reached an all-time high during the 2014 season. The SEC was still viewed as the king, the ACC looked hapless, the Big 12 touted its “one true champion” (until it had two), the Pac-12 was thought to be the deepest, and the Big Ten was still the little brother of the Power Five.

Now, with the 2014 college football season in the books and the national champion hailing from the Big Ten after steam-rolling the class of the SEC and Pac-12, what can be said for all of that conference grandstanding?

Not much.

What we learned this bowl season and from the playoff is that it all comes down to what happens on the field because reputation and equity built from past wins doesn’t matter between the hashes.

With all of the talk this season centering around the Power Five and which teams were going to be in or out of the inaugural playoff, the “Group of Five” conferences were left alone to bicker amongst themselves. So, how did the AAC stack-up against not only its colleagues in the Group of Five, but also its supposed Power Five superiors?

The table below should provide some insight. The conferences are ranked by their overall win percentage when combining all of their respective teams’ records, and the number of teams each conference had in the final AP Top 25 poll are included.

To me, this table looks about how I expected it to, and it illustrates the pretty clear gap that currently exists between the Power Five and Group of Five conferences. All of the Power Five conferences have a winning percentage above .500, while only the Mountain West accomplished that among the Group of Five. Boise State, Marshall and Memphis, who all won their respective conference, were the only Group of Five teams to finish in the AP Top 25, while each of the Power Five conferences saw at least three of their teams do so.

Getting back to the AAC specifically, it tied the MAC and only beat out the Sun Belt in win percentage, and Memphis was the lowest ranked of the three Group of Five teams in the AP Top 25. Also, the bottom of the AAC included Tulane, Tulsa, SMU and UConn, four teams that ranked near the bottom of several FBS statistical categories and are all probably included in the list of 10 or 15 worst teams in the country in 2014. The AAC had six bowl eligible teams, five were selected, and only Memphis and Houston came away with wins. Cincinnati, ECU and UCF failed to win their bowl games, all of which were against middling Power Five teams.

Even more alarming than the low winning percentage and lackluster bowl season for the AAC is its collective inability to win games against Power Five opponents. The numbers in the table below are not good for the conference’s national reputation.

In case you didn’t feel like totaling that record for the conference yourself, here it is: 4-21. That abysmal record includes a combined 0-8 from the AAC co-champions in Memphis, Cincinnati and UCF, and the only team with a winning record against the Power Five was Houston, who beat Pittsburgh in the Armed Forces Bowl by one point in a crazy comeback. East Carolina accounted for half of those four wins by beating Virginia Tech and North Carolina early in the year, and Temple beat a terrible Vanderbilt team in its season opener.

I think the AAC compared to the other conferences about how I expected it to from an overall record standpoint. With that said, I was shocked to see how poorly the conference showed against Power Five opponents, and I’m sure the powers-that-be within the AAC are not pleased with those results. This conference needs its upper-tier programs to win some of those match-ups, especially those against the mid-level Power Five programs, to avoid a perception as another MAC or C-USA league with a bunch of “directional schools” and wins waiting to be had on a Power Five schedule.

After UCF beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl in the AAC’s inaugural 2013 season, it appeared the conference had laid claim to relevancy within college football’s national conversation. 2014, on the other hand, appears to have been a step backwards.