Posted by girt25 on 9/28/2011 10:02:00 PM (view original):
Logically, I don't really think that holds much water. 

You're talking about the baseline prestiges of the individual schools, and that's decidedly not the culprit here. If it were, then we wouldn't be holding Cuse and Florida up as examples of what's gone a bit awry. It's the overall conference success (or lack thereof) that's clearly and heavily outweighing individual baseline prestige.

It's also worth noting that in the other world I'm in (Rupp), the ACC is terrible, easily the worst BCS conference and arguably lower on the totem pole than that. And the baseline prestiges are not propping anyone up. So it's also not as if the ACC is just automatically dominant in every world, either.

Posted by professor17 on 9/28/2011 9:41:00 PM (view original):
Problem No. 1 is that the average baseline prestige of the ACC schools, when converted to numerical values, is nearly a full letter grade higher than the average baseline prestige of all of the other BCS schools combined. That is way too big a gap, and inherently sets up the ACC to be a super-conference. People are talking about Allen alot, but it's a very similar scenario in Phelan as well. Two of the past three seasons, the ACC has had around $56K in bonus money per team, while the 2nd best conference was around $25K. Last season was a "down" season, so the advantage was a mere $43K to $28K.

I think the high ACC baseline prestige is the real culprit here. That's what's feeding the conference prestige effect, because they're already starting out a full letter grade higher than everyone else. I say bring the ACC baseline prestiges back down to earth a bit, and keep the conference prestige effect. After all, a team's conference affiliation can certainly enhance a school's appeal to recruits.

Posted by nbstowman on 9/29/2011 12:40:00 AM (view original):
My problem, along with this is why aren't certain coaches fired? One coach over there  in Allen ACC, even with the 60k every year has made 2 nts in the last 14 years, and won a total of one NT game during that time frame. If the conf is going to be that good, you should have to earn your keep instead of simply trash talking while riding the coat tails of your conf mates.

Posted by kmasonbx on 9/28/2011 10:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by professor17 on 9/28/2011 9:41:00 PM (view original):
Problem No. 1 is that the average baseline prestige of the ACC schools, when converted to numerical values, is nearly a full letter grade higher than the average baseline prestige of all of the other BCS schools combined. That is way too big a gap, and inherently sets up the ACC to be a super-conference. People are talking about Allen alot, but it's a very similar scenario in Phelan as well. Two of the past three seasons, the ACC has had around $56K in bonus money per team, while the 2nd best conference was around $25K. Last season was a "down" season, so the advantage was a mere $43K to $28K.

I think the high ACC baseline prestige is the real culprit here. That's what's feeding the conference prestige effect, because they're already starting out a full letter grade higher than everyone else. I say bring the ACC baseline prestiges back down to earth a bit, and keep the conference prestige effect. After all, a team's conference affiliation can certainly enhance a school's appeal to recruits.

Exactly what I've been saying. There is really no reason why the ACC isn't the best conference in every world.

I did a study on how teams in the Smith world were performing compared to their baseline prestige.  I was surprised to find that, except for the SEC (which dominates this world), most Big 6 teams are underperforming vs. their baseline.    This would lead you to believe that a mid-major conference made up of strong coaches could compete the the Big 6.   On the charts below the numbers next to the conference mean # of team above baseline prestige, number of teams at baseline, and number of teams below.  The 1st letter next to each team is their Season #53 prestige.  The 2nd letter next to each team is their baseline.