The last category to discuss is the 2006 NFL Draft. Through the first three categories discussed, the SEC has taken the lead but the ACC and the Big Ten are close behind. The Big XII has an outside chance of taking it over, but the Pac-10 and the Big East are almost surely out of the race.

I’ve removed Mid-Majors and Div I-AA players drafted from the following table. The table shows the number of total players drafted and how this number breaks out by round.

Once again, the Big East gets slaughtered in this category. Of the 11 Big East players drafted, eight of them were from Louisville and Syracuse. The Big East was the only major conference to not have a single player drafted in the first round. To make things worse, no Big East player was even drafted in the second round.

The Big XII fell to the Pac-10 by a small number of total players but what makes the Big XII look bad in this category is that of the 29 total players drafted, eight were picked in the sixth round. Of the three first round picks, two were from national champion Texas.

The Pac-10 had a decent showing in the 2006 NFL Draft.  If the Big XII was pushed ahead by Texas, the Pac-10 was absolutely carried by USC. Of the 32 Pac-10 players drafted, eleven were Trojans. No school had more high profile players taken by NFL teams this year than USC. Two Heisman Trophy winners in Bush and Leinart headline a long list of Trojans who are now getting ready to play on Sundays.

The SEC had an impressive showing in the NFL Draft as they usually do. There was a good balance of players drafted among the SEC schools. Georgia and LSU each had seven players drafted while Alabama and Tennessee each had five. Proud fans of the SEC were probably disappointed that despite the strong draft, the conference still fell short of the Big Ten and the ACC.

The Big Ten had a very impressive draft. The conference had 41 players picked by NFL teams but in this category the Big Ten is thoroughly dominated by its top schools. Ohio State had a whopping nine players taken, while Penn State had six and Wisconsin had five. These three schools almost accounted for half of the entire conference’s draft picks.

The ACC took this category to an entirely new level. The conference set all-time records with 51 total players selected AND twelve in the first round alone. As you’d expect, the ACC had three dominant schools in this category. Miami and Virginia Tech each equaled Ohio State by sending nine players to the NFL while Florida State sent eight. What you might not expect is that a sub-.500 NC State Wolfpack team sent six players to the NFL and three of these went in the first round.

Let’s take a look at the final standings.

Overall             Out of conference         Bowl games                  Polls                 NFL Draft

1. ACC (8)                  1                                 4                                  2                              1

2. SEC (9)                   2                                 3                                   1                              3

3. Big Ten (10)          3                                 2                                   3                              2

4. Big XII (15)           4                                  1                                   5                              5

5. Pac-10 (18)            5                                  5                                   4                              4

6. Big East (24)         6                                  6                                    6                              6

So, it’s time to discuss our final rankings. I’ve simply added the total rankings of each of the 4 categories discussed and it works like golf: lowest total wins. Besides what most people will look at first, one thing I like to look at is the bottom of the list. It should be pointed out that the Big East was absolutely miserable in 2005. In some categories, it competed well, but still came in last. In others, it was absolutely blown out of the water.

This conclusion will undoubtedly make many people angry because the ACC was the best conference in the country last year according to this study. The new biggie-sized conference had the best non-conference results as well as the best NFL Draft results. The only category where the ACC graded out weakly was in bowl games where it finished fourth. This was certainly evident in LSU’s destruction of Miami in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

Many will point to the fact that the champion of the league – Florida State – lost 5 games and got killed by their rival, the Florida Gators of the SEC. While that is a good point, it certainly makes the point that it’s a much tougher thing to play in a conference that holds a championship game than to play in one that doesn’t. Virginia Tech was a favorite in the ACC Championship Game and had the Hokies pulled off the win, no one would be able to point and say the conference was weak. One game does not make a conference strong or weak. This is a study which uses multiple criteria in different aspects of the game.

No one can argue that the ACC is a stronger conference than the SEC, the Big Ten, or even the Big XII and Pac-10 with regard to stadium size, gameday atmosphere, or tradition. But based on the criteria used in this study, a case can be made for the ACC as the college football’s best in 2005.

Read the other articles in this series:

Intro

Out of conference games

Bowl games

Polls