The Examiner.com wrote this excellent article about one of the key measures of big time college programs- players currently in the league. The article doesn't try to make the leap that the nBE is the best conference in terms of NFL talent, but instead tries to disprove the notion that there will be a significant drop off in quality of football in the league as compared to the P5.

http://www.examiner.com/article/big-east...fl-players

Premise:

Quote:Anybody who thinks the Big East will not be a power conference in college football in 2013 should look at the number of players in the NFL today that played for the 12 teams that will make up the Big East in 2013.

Facts:

Quote:Adding together the six teams already in the Big East that are staying, Louisville (19 NFL players), Rutgers (17), Cincinnati (15), UConn (12), Temple (10), and South Florida (9), with the six new teams, Boise State (18), UCF (13), San Diego State (12), SMU (9), Houston (8), and Memphis (6), and you get 148 NFL players. So an average of 12.33 players per Big East team are in the NFL right now.

Analysis:

Quote:15 teams from the so called Big Five college football conferences that each have less NFL players than the average Big East team does. So 25% of the teams from the Big Five conferences have less NFL players than the average Big East team. Collectively, the 15 teams average 8.5 NFL players vs a 12.33 average for the Big East teams.

Summary:

Quote:A bunch of partisan and biased old men sitting a room trying to control everything in college football can try and tell you differently, but the Big East will be a power conference in college football in 2013.

Well said...I wonder if Aresco & crew will add this to the list of talking points.

Nice find. He's saying we're much better than the bottom teams in the other big conferences. I agree. We're definitely a big boy conference, everywhere except in the BCS conference room.

great article....

ESPN and all those types can say whatever they want but the Big East is and has been better than they give us credit for....# teams ranked, nfl players, bowl wins, etc all provide evidence. The better we get they will either have to admit it or they will look more and more like the clueless morons that they are. Either way, we win.

(11-17-2012 08:59 AM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  great article....

ESPN and all those types can say whatever they want but the Big East is and has been better than they give us credit for....# teams ranked, nfl players, bowl wins, etc all provide evidence. The better we get they will either have to admit it or they will look more and more like the clueless morons that they are. Either way, we win.

Winning this fight before the arrival of BCS 3.0 will be the greatest achievement of Aresco's legacy as BE commish.

(11-17-2012 09:44 AM)TheRock Wrote:  

(11-17-2012 08:59 AM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  great article....

ESPN and all those types can say whatever they want but the Big East is and has been better than they give us credit for....# teams ranked, nfl players, bowl wins, etc all provide evidence. The better we get they will either have to admit it or they will look more and more like the clueless morons that they are. Either way, we win.

Winning this argument decisively before the arrival of BCS 3.0 will be the greatest achievement of Aresco's legacy as BE commish.

The only problem is that the author is cherry picking the data. He is taking the entire big east average and comparing it to the bottom feeders of the other 5 conferences. Compare conferences straight up and the BE average will be less than the other 5 conferences.

I have no issue with the BE being outside the power 5. I do not for minute think that the ACC is a better football conference than the BE will be, but the ESPN bias is hurting the BE's perception right now, give the BE a couple of years playing after their TV deal is worked out and I think you will see that the BE is on par with the "power" conferences and certainly above the MWC, CUSA, MAC and Sunbelt.

Most years, the New Big East will have more Top 25 "type" teams vs what the conf have put out in recent years.

Add in more games on TV, in more markets...plus first ever Divisional races and first ever conf champ game...future looks bright for the New Big East...very bright!

Great fine rock.

To reacher, what you say may have some merit, bit pnly if you hwve the entire datapool to note the a erages across the board. without it , hiur quote is an assumption, whichnis the point the article seems to make based on the excerpts. but the point was to show that if the level of NFL talent is on par, along with what we know about on the field performance, rankings, head to head, etc, it helps kill the argument that the big east is so much worse as percieved.

Look around the NFL and see where a lot of starting quarterbacks came from.
Starting running backs. You start to see a lot of players outside the power five. A lot.

(11-17-2012 01:25 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Great fine rock.

To reacher, what you say may have some merit, bit pnly if you hwve the entire datapool to note the a erages across the board. without it , hiur quote is an assumption, whichnis the point the article seems to make based on the excerpts. but the point was to show that if the level of NFL talent is on par, along with what we know about on the field performance, rankings, head to head, etc, it helps kill the argument that the big east is so much worse as percieved.

Look around the NFL and see where a lot of starting quarterbacks came from.
Starting running backs. You start to see a lot of players outside the power five. A lot.

Thanks for the shout AD...

I was thinking the same thing. Like it would be interesting to see the std deviation curves for the different leagues. That's to say, is the SEC top heavy with only a few teams (Bama & LSU) contributing to the conference's total where the nBE may have more even distribution of players indicating truer conference strength.

(11-17-2012 01:25 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  ... it helps kill the argument that the big east is so much worse as percieved.

Only ones that would dare to perceive that the old big east (with so few ranked teams) would be better than the new big east are those with obvious bias.

quick search gave this article; http://www.holyturf.com/2011/04/nfl-play...filiation/


SEC-308, 25.6
ACC- 278, 23.1
Big 10-256, 23.2
Big 12-221, 18.4
Pac-10-215, 21.5
Big East-115, 14.3

and here's a quick find of nfl'ers by college
http://espn.go.com/nfl/college/_/letter/s