Is the Big 12 really the best Division I conference in years?

It's an Insider article so we only get a sneak peak (see below), so if anyone has access, and can post it, that would be great. Based on the metrics the author mentions, it sounds like the rest of the article will bring down the Big 12 just a bit.

Watching the Big 12 this season has made me somewhat more respectful of how hard it really is to measure this "conference strength" thing that we talk about day in and day out.

Certainly the Big 12 is going to end 2016-17 looking exceptionally and even historically good in terms of top-to-bottom statistical strength. By this measure, it's likely that the league will rate out as one of the strongest conferences of the 21st century.

We can understand and sign off on how this has come to be. Texas is the worst team in the league, and the Longhorns, actually, are one of the 75 or definitely 100 best teams in Division I.

It is of great statistical importance whether Shaka Smart's guys rank where they do or, say, 50 spots lower. Again, that's understandable. If we're talking about how good a conference is, we have to know how good the teams in the conference are. Fair enough.

The descriptive problem here is that very good conferences tend to be more similar to each other at the top than they are at the bottom, and, at the risk of offending struggling teams, we care more about the top.

After all, is this really what we mean when we say "one of the strongest conferences of the 21st century?" That the Big 12 is great in about the same way the winning team in a relay race at a corporate retreat is great? The worst member of the group (let's call him Ted from accounting) is above average, so the whole team records a time that would rank in the 90th percentile or so for an entire population of 351 individuals with wildly differing skill levels.

That is one measure of conference strength, and, rightly, it's not going anywhere. But now, as we enter March, it is perhaps appropriate to augment our top-to-bottom measure with more of a top-to-top metric. I want to know where the Big 12 ranks historically in terms of its best teams, period.

Let's compare the Big 12 to other candidates that come to mind in terms of impressive collections of great teams within a single conference.

www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/ins...ion-conference-years

If you look at Sagarin, the Big 12 has been at the top of the heap for a few years running, if I remember correctly. It's also interesting when you look at the ratings how strong everyone in our league's SOS has become. Having to take on KU, WVU, Baylor, and ISU twice will do that for you I suppose.

I heard some ESPN pinheads talking about the ACC and SEC, but top-to-bottom it's hard to argue against the Big 12 over the past few years, and this year having KU, Baylor and WVU all in the top 5 at one point or another means that our top teams are pretty darn good too.

Port - I have Insider, but doubt my link would let anyone who doesn't have it, see the whole story. When I click on the link you included, I get the whole story.
How did you capture the part of the story that you posted??

Hi JR...so for Insider articles, there are usually a couple of sentences of text and then they tell you that you need paid access to see the rest of the article. In this case, there was a lot of "preview" text (the most I've ever seen actually). I just copy and pasted that from the site.

You could copy and paste the article of the text to the body of a message, but only if Dave is okay with that, of course.

I don't find any rules, but imagine would be frowned upon. The story wasn't all that much anyway. He cited this year's ACC (said it's seeds will likely be better than Big 12's), but of course they have 15 teams from which to get better seeds. Cited 08-09 Big East with three #1 seeds and two #3, also the 90-91 Big East with seven of nine in NCAA (78%). Said next year Big 12 may get 8 teams in. If they do, he will salute it as historically mighty, even if the bottom team is #175 vs #75. Said if this season has taught him anything, it's that "top to bottom" is just the beginning of the discussion when it comes to conference strength.

Thanks, JR. Yeah, that's perfect summary of the info

The whole conference strength thing is interesting, and to me the most important thing about it is to bolster just how amazing the 13 consecutive championships are.

For example, Gonzaga (they had a run of 11 I believe) plays in the West Coast league which is currently ranked 11th in Sagarin, with teams like Saint Mary's, BYU, San Francisco and Santa Clara. A decent league to be sure, but only just cracking the top 1/3 of the 34 D-1 leagues.

Here's a peek at some of the current power leagues (all data reflects Sagarin's data):

Big 12:
>League rank: #1 (86.13)
># of teams: 10
>Top team rank: 2 (WVU)
>Bottom team rank: 65 (Texas)
>% of teams in top 20: 40%
># of teams ranked 100+: 0

ACC:
>League rank: #2 (84.91)
># of teams: 15
>Top team rank: 3 (UNC)
>Bottom team rank: 148 (Boston College)
>% of teams in top 20: 33%
># of teams ranked 100+: 1 (7%)

Big East:
>League rank: #3 (83.19)
># of teams: 10
>Top team rank: 4 (Villanova)
>Bottom team rank: 163 (Depaul)
>% of teams in top 20: 10%
># of teams ranked 100+: 1 (10%)

Big Ten:
>League rank: #4 (82.65)
># of teams: 14
>Top team rank: 12 (Purdue)
>Bottom team rank: 125 (Rutgers)
>% of teams in top 20: 14%
># of teams ranked 100+: 1 (7%)

SEC:
>League rank: #5 (81.01)
># of teams: 14
>Top team rank: 5 (Kentucky)
>Bottom team rank: 152 (Misery )
>% of teams in top 20: 14%
># of teams ranked 100+: 2 (14%)


Pac 12:
>League rank: #6 (79.95)
># of teams: 12
>Top team rank: 11 (UCLA)
>Bottom team rank: 232 (Oregon St.)
>% of teams in top 20: 25%
># of teams ranked 100+: 4 (33%)

Some things that jump out:
-The Big 12 is the only one of the group that doesn't have anybody ranked past 100. The Pac 12 (Bill Walton's "Conference of Champions" is more of a "Conference of Chumps" with full 1/3 of the teams outside the top 100).

-The Big 12 leads the way with 40% of the league among the top 20 teams in Sagarin. The ACC is #2 with 1/3 of the league, and maybe the Pac 12 is the also the "Conference of Disparity" with 25% in the top 20.

Looking at the data, it's pretty clear to me that in the "top to bottom" argument, the Big 12 is clearly the most competitive league. We've got no actual "doormats" this year, and every other league has at least one. Also, with the larger leagues (pretty much everyone but us and the Big East), it's impossible to play a true "round robin" format for the league title where everyone plays everyone twice. While this might be a minor thing, I'm sure that we can all remember the cries of "we woulda beat you at our place" from angry opponents who played their single game against us in Allen Fieldhouse.

Bottom line, at least for this year, it's really hard to argue that the Big 12 isn't the toughest league since we have the highest number of top teams and the least amount of dropoff at the bottom end.