College football rankings by actual strength of record: It does mean more in the SEC

Now that the dust has settled after the Week 9 college football action, publications and pundits everywhere will be reevaluating how strong every team really is. Most fans will read the new AP Top 25 rankings and take that assessment to heart. But what if I told you there's another (more accurate) way to measure each team's quality?

The AP rankings a great, don't get me wrong, but they're also extremely subjective and just follow the law of averages based on the votes. There's actually a more calculated metric that can help inform college football fans just how good your team really is this year. ESPN's strength of record metric ranks each of the 134 FBS teams based on the "chance that an average Top 25 team would have a team's record or better, given the schedule."

SEC and Big Ten still dominate Top 25 in strength of record rankings

So what exactly does a strength of record ranking look like? Well, take a look at ESPN's metrics side-by-side with Sunday's AP rankings and see if you notice any glaring differences.

Obviously, the SEC (6 teams) and Big Ten (5 teams) are still the top dogs of college football with the quality of their schedules and the results they've yielded from playing them. But it's pretty clear that the AP voters are overvaluing some squads in an attempt to reward some for just winning or losing close to really good teams (i.e. Ohio State).

The most surprising teams near the top of the list? BYU and Iowa State as we've constantly been told that the Big 12 will only have one team in the College Football Playoff because the quality of opponents is that much lower. Well, the numbers don't lie. The Big 12 seems to have inherited the Pac-12's cannibalistic tendencies and if you can survive that then it should be duly rewarded.