It’s hard to believe now, but in two months, we’ll already be looking forward to the second week of the college football season.
Which conference is going to rise and fall on the basis of the 2015 football season? We take a look at all five power conferences and judge whether their stock price is up or down, and provide some predictions for the near future.
ACC
Stock: Cresting
Top Teams: Florida State, Clemson
Biggest Issue: Mediocrity
Advice: Sell high
Florida State and Clemson are among the national elite each year. We’ll see if FSU can continue that trend now that Jameis Winston has departed, and the ACC’s Tigers usually are buzzing around the Top 15, but rarely win more than a division title.
Outside of that, the ACC usually is decidedly mediocre. The conference fielded five teams last year that finished the season 7-6 or 6-7. The Seminoles were the only team that didn’t lose at least two conference games. The ACC has finished with a combined total of 12 teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 in the last four seasons, or just three per season. (The SEC claimed 13 in just the last two seasons.)
The Coastal Division is exciting because the gap from top to bottom is so small. Duke is just as likely to win as Miami or Virginia Tech.
It wouldn’t be a shocker if the ACC fails to place a team in the College Football Playoff this year, and though a conference TV network is coming, we may have seen the league hit its high-water mark in the last two or three seasons.
BIG 12
Stock: Down
Top Teams: TCU, Baylor
Biggest Issue: Whether to expand and/or institute a conference championship game
Advice: Buy low
The only conference without a team in the initial College Football Playoff, its members watched in horror as the selection committee chose eventual champion Ohio State ahead of TCU and Baylor, mostly because the Buckeyes looked so terrific in the Big Ten title game.
Oklahoma and especially Texas, the traditional big boys, are languishing, at least as of now. The Longhorn Network reportedly isn’t faring well. While other conferences rake in huge profits from new to newish TV networks, the Big 12 still has some family business to work out.
But on the field, the prognosis is good for the Big 12 to make this year’s four-team playoff. And you have to figure the blue-bloods at OU and UT aren’t going to allow the rest of the country to run laps around them forever.
BIG TEN
Stock: Up
Top Teams: Ohio State, Michigan State
Biggest Issue: Relative lack of a national spotlight
Advice: Plan to keep the stock in your portfolio as a long-term asset
This conference is starting to collect terrific coaches again, with Ohio State’s Urban Meyer as the cornerstone. The others are raising the recruiting profile quickly, including Penn State’s James Franklin and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh.
In recent seasons, the Big Ten hasn’t gotten much respect and notoriety as a national brand. Recruiting in the conference has suffered. Until the Buckeyes’ title after the ’14 season, the Big Ten hadn’t played in a national championship game since ’07 (an Ohio State loss to LSU).
Now that’s all changing. The conference is flush with money. Wisconsin, Michigan State and Nebraska all remain respectable programs or better. And the buzz generated by Meyer’s Ohio State and Harbaugh’s Michigan has national reach.
It may be too late to buy low here, but this stock should continue to trend up for several years.
PAC-12
Stock: Up slightly
Top Teams: Oregon, USC
Biggest Issue:
Advice: Not much strong value here; hold it if you’ve got it, but don’t buy it
In many ways, the conference is starting to feel similar to the SEC. The Pac-12 has been hogging a ton of good head coaches. The conference’s TV network is an asset. The branding is strong. The games are as entertaining and competitive as any power conference. And the strength of the league is its depth.
Oregon. USC. UCLA. Arizona. Arizona State. Stanford. They’re all in the hunt for a conference title, along with several other fringe Top 25 programs.
The league isn’t going to claim national domination any time soon, but it’s very well-positioned to be a relevant, important football conference every single year far into the future. Along with the SEC, the Pac-12 may be built to remain the most consistent FBS conference in football.
SEC
Stock:Â Holding steady
Top Teams: Alabama, Auburn
Biggest Issue: Expectations
Advice: Buy
The conference’s run of seven consecutive national championships is fading into the rear-view mirror, but the outsized expectations it created are not. If you’re a strong contender in the SEC, anything less than a conference and national title is considered a disappointment by default.
Quarterback play is down after a historic group left in 2013. Marquee programs in other power conferences like FSU, Ohio State and Oregon are at least as successful right now as anyone in the SEC. The Big Ten probably has more momentum right now, while select schools in the Big 12 and Pac-12 have offenses at least as impressive as the SEC’s best.
On the plus side, the conference remains the best at securing prep football talent and developing players into NFL-worthy draft picks. Its coaches (including assistants) are compensated handsomely. The SEC essentially prints money now with the creation of the SEC Network. The facilities are top-notch and modern, almost across all 14 programs. The fans are as passionate as ever.
Judging by championships, the stock is down. But looking at the underlying factors, the SEC is a blue-chip stock that no matter how many times the analysts wonder if it has bumped into a ceiling, the price continues to rise. With all the talk about SEC bias and the continued search for the next national championship, now is a good time to get a value buy on this stock.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
