Offseason Filler: Ranking the 2017 Power Five Football Conferences

The college football season is three months away. It feels like it just ended a few weeks ago. Soon enough, the 2017 campaign will begin, but there’s no time to waste in comparing the Power Five football conferences.

Is it the Atlantic Coast Conference at the top of college football? Has the SEC retained its long-standing position as the best conference in the land? Is it actually one of the other three, the Big Ten, Pac-12, or Big 12?

Soon enough, we will find out which is best in 2017. That doesn’t mean we can’t piece things together now. How do the five most prominent conferences in college football rank this 2017 offseason?

It’s not just the fact that the ACC holds the current national championship in football. Bowl season and the final AP rankings show which one was best exiting the 2016 season. The ACC went 9-3 in their 12 bowl games, and like the SEC below it had five teams ranked. Two teams are in the top ten, with four in the top 20.

Perhaps it was just good fortune for the ACC during bowl season. In basketball, they arguably had the best regular season by far but crashed in the NCAA Tournament. When it came to football, however, other conferences may have been equal, but people will remember the bowls. The ACC still had two top ten teams before bowl season, and five ranked teams overall.