Again I think in determining Strength of Conference versus Other Conferences you only have 50~ish data points, and of those only 20~ish P5 data points. The B1G played 42 OOC games this year, 12 of those P5, and 8 bowl games. Bowl games are significant portion, but not shouldn't they over valued, or disregarded.
I would order the the significance of determining Strength of Conference something like this:
1) OOC P5 - 35% - you get the most data points from this, and most varied data points here.
2) Bowl Games - 30% - you get the 2nd most significant data points, supposedly the closest matched games.
3) Advanced Metrics - 20% - Advanced metrics, let the number crunches do what they do, this let's us know past Wins and Losses how strong certain results are. This year B1G had 5 bowl games determined by one score, ie really close games that could have gone a different way, don't get too big a head you played a competitive game.
4) Conference games - 10% - doesn't determine Strength of Conference vs Conference at all, but in conference pecking order to compare to other conferences pecking order. (IE we can see if a below average conference team beat an above average OOC team.)
5) OOC other - 5% - I think only significant when an upset occurs.
B1G East went 7-4 versus other P5, pretty impressive. They went 4-3 in OOC and 3-1 in bowls. IE bowls are significant, just not the biggest part.
OSU 3-1 (1-1 P5)
PSU 4-0 (2-0 P5)
MSU 3-1 (1-1 P5)
UM 3-1 (1-1 P5)
Rut 1-2 (0-1 P5)
Mary 2-1 (1-0 P5)
Ind 3-0 (1-0 P5)
B1G West went 6-3 versus other P5, impressive. They went 2-3 in OOC and 4-0 in Bowls. The bowl games took the B1G west from below average versus P5 too impressive.
Wis 4-0 (1-0 P5)
NW 3-1 (1-1 P5)
Pur 3-1 (1-1 P5)
Iowa 4-0 (2-0 P5)
Neb 1-2 (0-1 P5)
Minn 3-0 (1-0 P5)
Ill 2-1 (0-0 P5)
Caveat, I understand for scheduling purposes some non-P5 schools count as P5, but I only counted Notre Dame here. Those other teams are popular enough to warrant P5 money but schedule they are not. While as Notre Dame plays 5 ACC, 2 P12, and B1G every year (ie a P5 schedule.)
In the grand scheme of things 20 data points are not enough to determine which conference is better than another, and 8 bowl games is definitely not enough. But we can with a wide enough brush start to paint a picture of how a conference is by looking at all of this in the right lens.
