The wackiest thing  about the whole BCS thing is that the Big East is a BCS conference in football.  Year in and year out it is hard to say that they even have 1 team in the top 10.  After this year, when it's not likely that they have any teams with even just 1 loss and more than likely 2 losses, why do they qualify a team to a BCS bowl?   The system is broken and the fact that the Big East is a BCS conference proves it as much as anything.  They only have 8 teams so they can share the wealth-what a crock!  Well at least Syracuse beat Akron so they must be great.

Big East has one advantage over all the other BCS conferences in that they've hand picked every member since the early 90's. There are no Duke's or Baylors hopelessly weighing the league down. The overall strength of the conference is then high and with 2 top 25 finishers every year they come out looking okay with only 8 members. With all the changes possible in upcomming years most of the BE might end up joining another BCS conference and what is left will not even be worth OHIO's time.

SI rates Syracuse as the worse DI BCS program, I think the anchor around their neck is a tad heavier than Duke or Baylor.

If I were to take a look at the last decade of football I would say that Syracuse and Louisville have been more on the level of UNC and NCState in football than Duke and Wake. Syracuse was the number 2 eastern power behind Penn State for many years. Louisville for all their recent shortfalls on the football field opened an expanded to 55,000 Papa John's stadium this year. Ohio is playing a money game at this expanded stadium in a couple of seasons. In the 90's the Big East was like the Mountain West with Miami, VT, and usually Syracuse in the top 3 but many schools struggling to put 25,000 in the stands. They only had 3 or 4 bowl tie-ins the fact that the conference even was accepted into the BCS was highly questioned but justified with Miami Fl and its relationship to the Orange Bowl BCS game. Programs like Rutgers and Temple were never in major conferences before and they couldn't put 15,000 in the house. BCS status began to help recruiting and suddenly the middle part of the football conference became a lot better around 2001-2002 with Pitt, WVU, Boston College stepping up and becoming regular 8 win teams. Miami, VT, BC leave in 2004-05 but the Big East also cuts Temple which helps Rutgers take off and they've become in their own right 50,000 a game draw. UConn comes into the Big East off the bat as a 40,000 draw. When you are considering defining a conference as a major  player it doesn't hurt that Pitt, Syracuse, UConn and Louisville are at the very top of the basketball world. Compare them overall in football and basketball to say Oregon State, Mississippi, Texas Tech, Kansas State and I would say the Big East schools have better brands. Cincinnati is the weakest football draw in the BE at 35,000 right now but they've got national basketball titles. I would put their total brand value over a Wake Forest or Miss St. Adding Cincinnati and Louisville to the Big East over East Carolina was a good move brand wise for the conference and that is the strategy. Its a conference with 8 mid level BCS football programs but with very top level basketball. 

Pitt and WVU stepped it up in the 2001-02 time frame and that really helped ease the transition when Miami and VT left. South Florida and Louisville also walked into the Big East at the top 25 level. The Big East lucked out really that everyone began to pull their weight. With the way the BCS rules are scripted the gap between the Big East and the non-BCS conferences is large enough that they don't have to worry about the MAC or CUSA taking their seat at the table. They could actually take on a couple of project football schools like a Memphis as strong as what they are top to bottom at this point and give them 5 years to bring recruiting up to BCS par.

That is this week after week 1. What have the numbers looked like over the past 4-5 years.

Thanks for the link, I always enjoy the articles about the computer rankings.

But, isn't this a little bit of weak (simplistic?) interpretation? 

*I would argue the computer rankings (specifically the one questioned here, Sagarin) are more tailored for rankings teams, and the conference rankings are secondary.  The top 10 teams last year according to Sagarin were Bama, Florida, Texas, TCU, Boise, OSU, Va Tech, Cincy, Iowa, and Penn st.  I would say that's probably pretty close to accurate (for the record TCU and Boise are les than a point different from each other). 

*What bragging rights does highest rated (or best) conference garner?  That doesn't equate to best team, just strongest average of team or lowest number of pushovers relative to conference size.

*To choose a small sample size to disprove the ratings is just a bad idea to begin with.  Especially when bowls for the most part are just a mish-mash of teams, and teams don't do on to advance and play other teams.

Computers are always going to be flawed.  The good models account for what they can.  Home field, relative score within reason, when teams play, how the game was played.  There are always going to be intangibles that can't be accounted for, I grant you that.  However I prefer systematic grading over the human element any day of the week to eliminate the subjectivity.