Conference Title Drought

With the heat wave that has been in the Raleigh area as well as most places in the Southeast over the last week or so, it brought up another area where a major drought is occurring. Now that baseball is down to the College World Series, all conference tournaments have been completed in all sports for the 2010-2011 academic year. We can now include the academic year with previous years.

In a recent interview with NC State’s athletic director Debbie Yow, Pack Pride touched on several topics, including asking the following question:

Are there any plans to introduce any other sports at NC State such as lacrosse, field hockey, or maybe ice hockey?

After she said that no new sports are being added, she included this interesting quote:

In my office we refer to the Big Four and they are football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and baseball. They need to be taken care of. They are at the top of the list in terms of meeting needs and wants.

Yow’s statement parallels my beliefs for a long time. These are the four revenue sports. I know that in reality football and men’s basketball are THE revenue sports, but women’s basketball and baseball are also revenue sports. In some places, they are major revenue sports. How much money does Tennessee women’s basketball or LSU baseball generate? Millions of dollars.

If these are the four most important sports in our athletic director’s eyes, then we need to do some analysis on our success (or lack of) in these sports. The main questions I am curious about are the following:

1. What years and who should I use to begin this analysis?
2. How do we compare with the other ACC schools in terms of number of conference titles in the four sports?
3. How do we compare with the other BCS schools in terms of number of conference titles in the four sports?
4. Who has the most conference titles?
5. Who has the least conference titles?

Let’s answer the questions.

1. What years and who should I use to begin this analysis?

This can be very arbritary and can change the outcome of the analysis. I have chosen the beginning of Lee Fowler’s tenure as athletic director. The academic year of 2000-2001 is where this analysis begins. What schools to use was a bit easier. I only have interest in comparing like schools, so I will only look at BCS schools.

Note: Conference champions are considered to be the winner of the conference tournament or the football championship game. For the Pac-10, Big 10, and Big East, since they do not have a football championship game, any school that had a share of the conference title was awarded as much.

2. How do we compare with the other ACC schools in terms of number of conference titles in the four sports?

Here are the number of conference titles for each ACC school since 2000-01.

Note: The number of titles for Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech include titles won in both the Big East and ACC, as they have been in both conferences during the time span of the analysis.

3. How do we compare with the other BCS schools in terms of number of conference titles in the four sports?

The average number of conference titles in the four major sports since 2000-2001 per BCS team is 4.22. 26 schools won at least 5 conference titles, while 15 schools won no more than one conference title during that time span.

Obviously, we are below the mean and are at the bottom of the list. Are there any other teams? That is investigated in another question.

4. Who has the most conference titles?

The team that has won the most conference titles for this analysis has been in the news much of the past month, albeit with very negative media attention. Ohio State has won 19 conference titles. They are the only BCS school that has won at least one conference title in each of the four sports, impressively winning at least four titles in each sport (7 in football). Of the schools that have won double digits worth of conference titles, all had won in at least 3 sports, except for Duke, who has won 14 titles between just men’s and women’s basketball. Here is a list of the top six schools:

5. Who has the least conference titles?

We can see in the table showing the ACC schools that NC State has won 0 conference titles. Are there any other schools that have not won any conference titles in that time span? Yes, there are 3 other schools. They are:

Arkansas
Texas Tech
South Florida

Each of these schools does have a caveat that the Wolfpack doesn’t. Arkansas has won two division football titles while Texas Tech has won one. And South Florida didn’t join the Big East until 2005.

NC State doesn’t have any such caveats.

Here is a list of the schools that have won no more than one conference title in this time span:

So what are the takeaways from this, besides that the Wolfpack are definitely title starved? While there are some universities that have a high number of titles, the majority of schools have somewhere between 2 and 7. This indicates that yearly revenue sport championships are not expected at the overwhelming majority of BCS schools; however, expecting to have some championship hardware in 11 years is a Mendoza line that should be attainable.

As we discussed in question 5, we are at the bottom of the list, with no caveats…the ONLY school without a caveat. It is no stretch to say that the Wolfpack has been the least successful athletic program in terms of conference championships in the four revenue sports since 2000-2001.

Here is one final statistic and comment:

As discussed a couple of years ago:

[since] the beginning of the 1992-1993 season there is one full-time BCS school that has not won a single conference title in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball or baseball:

NC State

This drought has now spanned four athletic directors. The last revenue conference title was won under Todd Turner. No revenue conference titles were won under Les Robinson nor Lee Fowler. Debbie Yow has only been director for one year, but it is her goal, and Wolfpack Nation’s goal, to end this truly embarrasing drought. Yow seems to be on the right track to get this addressed. The administration and fanbase hope this ends in the 2011-2012 year.

Note: I have the other BCS conferences’ tables of conference titles from 2000-2001 to the present below for comparison.