Kelly Lyell, who is a reporter for the Fort Collins Coloradoan said the following:
and I thought the same as well. So I looked at whether this holds using the
Complex Invasion College Football Production Model since the 2008 season. The results are listed in the table below. First, I found the top ranked team in each conference and listed the conference. The AAC/Big East had the better top ranked team in six of the ten seasons. Then I looked at the average of the top four teams in each conference and found that the AAC/Big East had the better teams in nine of the last ten seasons. Finally, in terms of conference overall rankings, the AAC/Big East was better than the Mountain West for each season.
| Season |
|
Top |
|
Average |
| 2008 |
|
Mountain West |
|
AAC |
| 2009 |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |
| 2010 |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |
| 2011 |
|
Mountain West |
|
AAC |
| 2012 |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |
| 2013 |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |
| 2014 |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |
| 2015 |
|
Mountain West |
|
AAC |
| 2016 |
|
Mountain West |
|
Mountain West |
| 2017* |
|
AAC |
|
AAC |