Okay, we’ve had some time to digest the 2005-06 college football season and have even gotten to witness the 2006 NFL Draft. One of the most talked about subjects lately has been: what was the best conference in college football last year?

Everyone has their own opinions about this topic and the great thing about it is that it’s a subject that really stirs up the emotion. There may be nothing that gets someone to puff their chest more than when you ask them if their team is in the best conference. People will always disagree with each other about this because it’s a totally subjective topic but let’s at least agree on one thing: the answer to this all-important question depends on which measuring stick you use.

Some people look at cumulative out of conference record for all of the teams and compare that record to that of the other conferences. Other people look primarily at success in the Bowl Games. Some look at rankings in the most popular polls and some look at numbers of NFL draft picks. There are some who look merely at TV ratings and others who look at history, stadium size, or gameday atmosphere.

So, let’s try to break this down. Why not take a look at all of these different gauges separately and come up with a conclusion? This article will be the first in a series of articles that attempts to answer the question: who was the best conference in college football in 2005?

Some of these criteria are more subjective than others, but I will attempt to add a bit of my own subjectivity to each. I’ll do this for two reasons: the first being that I believe stats don’t always tell the whole story. An out of conference record can look real nice if you’re playing I-AA opponents and cream puffs all season. The second reason is because it’s more fun to be subjective - what fun would it be if all we did was compare stats?

The first thing we should do is to at least agree that the best conference was in fact one of the six BCS conferences. I believe strongly that the parity in college football is increasing steadily and that soon we should consider increasing the number of automatic BCS bids (that’s an opinion that would upset many, but that’s for another day). However, I’m still not going to be convinced that C-USA or the MAC can compete with the six BCS conferences if you were to stack them up team by team. So, this series of articles will solely focus on the six BCS conferences and the 65 teams that make them up.

Hopefully as you read this series of articles you get offended, angry, and upset. If that hasn’t happened, I haven’t done my job. Stay tuned for the first measuring stick in this study: out of conference record.