For the next two weeks, I will be taking a look at the conference teams of the decade for 2000-2009. Factored into my analysis will be conference win %, conference and division titles, bowl games and bowl wins. I will also include BCS bowl wins, final AP rankings and number of national championships for the major conferences. There have been several teams who have changed conferences during that time and I will include them in the analysis for any season(s) they were affiliated with that certain conference. I will also be doing a breakdown of how the conference did in bowl games during the decade and I will emphasis the overall win/loss record, the number of BCS bowl wins, and the records against Non-BCS and ranked bowl teams.

While some conferences may have no-brainers as the top team, other conferences were very competitive over the past decade. Here is the schedule for the upcoming week with the conferences I will be analyzing on each date.

June 28 Sun Belt
June 29 MAC
June 30 WAC
July 1 CUSA
July 2 MWC
July 3-4 Big East
Monday Pac-10
Yesterday ACC
Today Big 12
Tomorrow Big 10
Friday SEC
July 10-11 Conference Bowl Records

The Big 12 has been the talk of the college football this offseason with expansion and re-alignment rumors. Nebraska will head to the Big 10 next year and Colorado will be moving on to the Pac-10 in 2011. The conference will probably get a name change in this upcoming decade and while there was talk that the conference could cease to exist for now most of the conference was able to stay together for the near future.

Looking back at the past decade there were just the sane 12 members separated by two 6-team divisions. What is interesting to note is at the start of the decade the North division was considered much stronger than the South with Nebraska being a regular national title contender, Kansas St a perennial Top 25 team under Bill Snyder and Colorado being a solid program under Gary Barnett. Meanwhile, the South division had traditional powers Oklahoma and Texas but heading into the 2000 season, Bob Stoops was in just his 2nd season after going 7-5 in his 1st year and Mack Brown was in his 3rd season and they too were coming off a five loss season in 1999.

That 2000 season however would be a harbinger for things to come in the decade as Oklahoma would run the table and win the national title. Meanwhile Texas won nine games and the following year would begin their current run of nine consecutive 10-win seasons! On the North side Nebraska would enjoy a few more solid years before slipping in the middle part of the decade while Colorado and Kansas St both suffered similar fates but have yet to recover like Nebraska has done under HC Pelini. Clearly Texas and Oklahoma were the two powers in the Big 12 the past ten years but which school gets my vote as team of the decade?

Here are my overall rankings for Big 12 team of the decade.

Big 12 Rankings 2000-2009

Oklahoma gets my vote for #1 despite having one less win than Texas in conference play. The Sooners six Big 12 titles dominated the conference and they enjoyed seven AP Top 10 finishes and won a national title in 2000. While the Sooners have lost 4 of the L/5 vs the Longhorns, they did win 5 straight from 2000-04 by an avg margin of 38-11!
Texas is a clear #2 here as they had the best win % and won 2 titles along with five outright or shared division titles. The Horns won a national title in 2005 and had 7 AP Top 10 finishes and 3 BCS wins.

Nebraska had a great start to the decade and slipped in the middle part. However, the last couple of years under HC Pelini the Cornhuskers are back at the top of the conference and get my vote for #3. Despite having the same win %, Nebraska had 5 outright or shared division titles, which puts them ahead of #4 Texas Tech. The Red Raiders had a great decade and naturally are hurt by the fact that they are in the same division as Texas and Oklahoma.  Texas Tech did go to 10 straight bowl games and finished in the Top 25 five times. Despite not winning an overall conference title their conference win % was much higher then the remaining teams.

Kansas St, Colorado and Missouri all won our shared multiple division titles and had at least one AP Top 10 finish. Kansas St’s 2 AP Top 10 finishes and outright title in 2003 puts them at #5 while Colorado’s 2001 title gives them the nod over Missouri.

A couple of interesting notes is that the conference had 21 AP Top 10 finishes which naturally is an avg of two a year. Also only four teams have a winning conference record this decade, which is probably due to the dominance of Texas and Oklahoma who have each won over 80% of their games.

Here are the overall bowl records for Big East teams during the course of the decade.

Big 12 Bowl Records '00-'09

The conference finished with a 38-39 overall record with not much difference between their record against BCS conference teams and Non-BCS teams. The Big 12 did have a sub-par record against ranked teams (18-25) and were just 6-9 in BCS bowls thanks to Oklahoma losing five straight and the ranked teams were just 19-20 (48.7%). Texas had a solid 7-3 record with five of the wins coming against ranked teams and the Horns were 3-1 in BCS games. Oklahoma and Texas Tech both went to a bowl every year and finished at 5-5, which heavily contributed to the conference’s near overall .500 mark.

I will be back tomorrow with a look at the Big 10 conference.

Also please check PhilSteele.com everyday to get my FCS Top 25 Countdown, which continues with #14 Cal Poly. Thru July 20th, I will post both magazine pages on a new team ranked in the Top 25 and you can get an early look on how I breakdown your favorite FCS team. Remember those magazine pages are available for only 24 hours for you to download as the next team will be posted the following day.

Only 57 Days Until the First College Football Game!!!