Another year, another SEC national champion. All the handwringing over the league’s 3-3 start to the bowl season was clearly a major waste of time and effort. We noted a week ago that the SEC’s bowl winning percentage over the past 15 years was about 60%, not 100%. As it turns out, this year’s winning percentage was about 67%.
This wasn’t a down year for the SEC in bowl games… it was an up year.
Below are the updated bowl records for all of the major conferences during the 2012 season and over the course of the last 15 years (the BCS era):
| Conference | All Bowls ’98-’12 | BCS Bowls ’98-’12 | All Bowls 2012 | BCS Bowls 2012 |
| Big West | 2-0 (100.0%) | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| Big East | 46-29 (61.3%) | 8-7 | 3-2 | 1-0 |
| SEC | 73-50 (59.3%) | 17-8 | 6-3 | 1-1 |
| MWC | 32-24 (57.1%) | 3-1 | 1-4 | 0-0 |
| Pac-10/12 | 41-45 (47.5%) | 13-7 | 4-4 | 2-0 |
| Big XII | 57-63 (47.5%) | 9-11 | 4-5 | 0-1 |
| ACC | 49-55 (47.1%) | 3-13 | 4-2 | 1-0 |
| WAC | 23-28 (45.0%) | 2-1 | 2-0 | 0-0 |
| C-USA | 33-41 (44.5%) | 0-0 | 4-1 | 0-0 |
| Big Ten | 47-59 (44.3%) | 12-14 | 2-5 | 0-1 |
| Sun Belt | 10-13 (43.4%) | 0-0 | 2-2 | 0-0 |
| MAC | 21-28 (42.8%) | 0-1 | 2-5 | 0-1 |
Observations:
* The SEC has 16 more bowl wins than any other conference since the 1998 season.
* The SEC has more bowl bids over that span than any other conference.
* Despite its teams often playing opponents that finished higher in their own conference standings, the SEC has the third-best winning percentage among conferences. Only the Big West — defunct for more than a decade — and the Big East have better overall winning percentages since 1998.
* Look at the overall bowl records for the Big Ten and the MAC and you have to wonder just how much talent remains in the American Midwest as people migrate to the South and to the West. No wonder Midwestern teams and leagues are searching for ways to reach the prospects in the Sun Belt region.
* Of the five major conferences remaining today — ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-12, and SEC — only the SEC has a winning bowl mark over the past 15 seasons.
And finally, the list everyone is talking about this morning:
| Season | BCS Champion | Conference |
| 1998 | Tennessee | SEC |
| 1999 | Florida State | ACC |
| 2000 | Oklahoma | Big XII |
| 2001 | Miami, FL | Big East |
| 2002 | Ohio State | Big Ten |
| 2003 | LSU | SEC |
| 2004 | Southern Cal | Pac-10/12 |
| 2005 | Texas | Big XII |
| 2006 | Florida | SEC |
| 2007 | LSU | SEC |
| 2008 | Florida | SEC |
| 2009 | Alabama | SEC |
| 2010 | Auburn | SEC |
| 2011 | Alabama | SEC |
| 2012 | Alabama | SEC |
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