I have a spreadsheet that I am using to rank the conferences using the Massey Index. The Massey site already ranks them, but I have things plugged in so that we can see the numbers for the realigned conferences (excluding the FCS additions to Conference USA).
Here are the current rankings (let's see if this works):
Observations:
We're mid-season, but for the CURRENT membership most of the rest of the games will be in-conference so I don't expect much movement. For FUTURE, there will be movement because the realigning teams are playing "out of conference" in that tally.
The fact that the three teams going from the AAC to the Big 12 have a combined conference record of 5-1 so far are probably inflating the Big 12's future strength and deflating the AAC's. It's not clear how well the incoming teams will do with the tougher Big 12 schedule and those games will be incorporated in the baseline .500 record the conference will have in conference play.
That said, the Big 12 is really kicking some [redacted] before and after realignment. Really impressive and encouraging. If they hadn't nailed down the playoff format, it would have been hard to devise a "SuperTwo" or "Power Four" that excludes us (even if USC-UCLA hadn't jumped).
Last year I did the comparison with Sagarin instead of Massey and it told a similar story for the G5. The Big Ten closer to the SEC and Big 12 though.
The ACC and Pac-12 are closer to the current AAC than they are to the SEC. That seems very notable.
It's not listed, but adding the corner schools puts the Big 12 squarely between the Big Ten and ACC at 43.4.
At the G5 level these numbers make me more bullish on the AAC. As of right now at least the gap with the SBC isn't big and going forward the AAC will have a media advantage.
This has to be the worst season in Mountain West Conference history. Just astonishingly bad. I have to think this is a one-off but good heavens they were passed up by Conference USA.
My CURRENT numbers are slightly different than the ones on the Massey site because they are less refined. I put them up mostly for an apples-to-apples comparison. Really, though, the difference is within any margin of error for such crude measurements.