P5 Conference Comparison
A look at out of conference (OOC) games across conferences
Which conference is the strongest, the deepest, the best? These questions are asked every year and answered in many different ways. Here are just a few of the answers I’ve seen: number of schools in top 25, schools in the playoffs, national champions, schools with winning records, better offense/defense rankings, number of NFL players produced, and head to head results in OOC games.
The problem is, not all conferences are playing equally hard OOC schedules in the regular season (no bowl games or playoff games are included in these charts).
Note: the data shown covers 2015-2025 seasons (excluding the abnormal 2020 season).
We can see from this first chart that OOC schedules vary quite a bit across conferences. The SEC plays significantly more G5 schools than it does P5 schools. Their ratio is almost 2:1 with a much weaker OOC lineup of G5 schools. In comparison, the ACC is the hardest lineup with more P5 schools than G5.
For those who want more details, here is the same data showing wins and losses against those P5 and G5 schools in OOC games.
Now we can really see where some conferences are benefiting from playing more G5 schools in OOC games. The SEC, Big Ten, B12, and PAC all were fairly equal in their matchups against other P5 schools. But the ACC played significantly more of those matchups and exposed themselves to more opportunities for losses.
But how good were the teams they played against? The SEC and BIG may have played a large number of games against G5 teams, but how good were those teams? Lucky for us, we can use final records to gauge the level of competition in these OOC games. I’ll provide a chart for each of the P5 conferences where the opponents are grouped into three levels based on number of wins they had for the season (10+ wins, 7-9 wins, 0-6 wins).
The SEC
The Big Ten
The ACC
The Big 12
The PAC
Notre Dame
The data is very clear on four points.
The SEC and Big Ten have played a lot of G5 teams in their OOC schedules.
The SEC and Big Ten have played a lot of bad or average G5 teams in their OOC schedules.
The ACC and Notre Dame have played a lot of P5 teams in their OOC schedules (and the ACC has overextended themselves on this, resulting in a high number of losses).
The P5 schools as a whole rely heavily on the G5 schools for OOC games. The G5 schools have been an important part of the P5 college football seasons.