How are the BCS conferences acquitting themselves in the poinstpread department vs. non-conference play?  Though it doesn’t exactly portend the future, sports bettors want to know.

With the pointspread being hammered out by real money in a global marketplace, it is a reasonably accurate reflection of team strength and expectations. So the spread results are a good way to measure the relative strength of the conferences.

Obviously it doesn’t tell us everything.  USC shouldn’t be punished for having Washington State in the Pac Ten.  And it doesn’t tell us much about the Big 12 when Kansas fails to cover when they beat FIU by 30, but covers in a 29-point win over Louisiana Tech.  A TD with third stringers on the field would have changed the pointspread result in either game.

But it is hard to deny that the Pac Ten and Big 12 look formidable, while the ACC and Big East have underperformed.

Let’s look at the conference pointspread records.

Pac Ten            7-2 (77.7%)

Big 12              12-4 (75%)

SEC                   8-5-1 (61.5%)

Big 10               6-7 (46.1%)

ACC                   3-6-1 (33.3%)

Big East            0-10 (0%)

Why does the Pac Ten have fewer non-conference pointspread results?  It isn’t due to feasting on 1-AA opponents in unlined games.  In fact, the opposite is the case.  Rather than use the 12th game added a couple of years ago to fatten up on lower division opponents, the Pac Ten added an extra conference game.

With their full round-robin schedule, the Pac Ten plays fewer non-conference games than anyone else. There have been four conference games played already, and Stanford is already 1-1 in conference play.  With their cross-town rivalry not taking place until December 6th, USC and UCLA both had last Saturday off.

The Big East has been horrendous.  With an 0-10 pointspread mark and the average spread loss of -14.7 points per game (and that includes the TD margins that USF and UConn developed in overtime Saturday) the conference is barely competitive from top to bottom.

It will be interesting to see how predictive these standings are, not only as non-conference play winds down in the next couple of weeks, but come bowl season as well.