In Reply to: Are we really the toughest conference in NCAA baseball? posted by TheNewBruinPrototype on March 23, 2010 at 11:37:52
Are we really the toughest conference? Well, for starters, teams from this conference have won half of the national collegiate baseball championships all-time, in 60 plus years. More recently, this conference has won two of the last four championships. And so far this year, Pac-10 teams have a winning percentage of around .730 against teams from other conferences. Perhaps I could have chosen a better adjective than "toughest" to describe the Pac-10, since that word is hard to define in this context, but I do think the conference should be accorded respect as the most successful in the sport of baseball. I'm interested in other criteria for comparing conferences that you'd care to suggest.
Why are only two teams from this conference in the top ten? Since there are thirty conferences in division I, the fact that there are two Pac-10 teams in the top 10 does not contradict my claim that this is the toughest conference. But beyond that, I do think that those who rate teams are biased towards southeastern teams, favoring them with higher rankings than their records would otherwise deserve. Again, I'm interested in other explanations you'd care to offer.