A10 vs BE7 vs nBE

[yorost]

The claim that the A10 is possibly stronger than the BE7 is something that has come up here and in many places regarding the BE7. I decided to use Sagarin numbers (which is offered for free here: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin-archive.htm) to look at the comparison of how these two groups of schools, the BE7 and current 16 schools in the A10, would have faired as conferences in recent years. Sagarin is nice because it is not supposed to be biased by conference affiliation and is meant as a predictor instead of a ranker. His primary calculation numbers for conference ratings heavily weight the middle teams of a conference, so the worst and best carry significantly less weight than the group in the middle. It usually works out similar to the simple average, though.



Over the available years Sagarin offers this A10 never rates higher than the BE7. The A10's best year is below the BE7's worst year (which occurred in the same season, go figure). These numbers just match what other places have indicated, the BE7 is low major on its own and the A10 is a high mid-major. The BE7 compare closer to the ACC or B1G than they do the A10, though the ACC and B1G are clearly a step above the BE7.

The BE7 is not starting as an absolute top conference, but they are a clearly in with the power conferences. This is not poised to be a step down for the possible teams to be invited. I didn't include it on the graph because there are so many possibilities, but adding Xavier, Butler, and Creighton does noticeably bump the BE7 up, though nothing so drastic as into the high major category.

Adding the 10 New Big East schools onto the line...



They're pretty much on par with the current A10. No surprise if their media deal is lower for the basketball end. Some good teams, but too many teams thin everything out, obviously.

[Dew]

C7 and BE > A10.

I don't need graphs and stats to prove that.

[yorost]

Added the New Big East into the first post.