Who Plays in the Toughest Conference?

12.05.2023College Men

After reflecting on the past weekend in college rugby, we at GRR World Headquarters got down to looking at college conferences.

As we've talked about before, we do judge conferences in part based on which conferences work for the teams involved. Some of the criteria for judging conferences is how many close games there are and whether the teams involved are of a like background and set of goals.

Lately, the conferences have come together and shifted into a situation where most of them are made for teams with common goals and backgrounds. Not all are consistently competitive.

We looked at D1A, NCR D1, and D1AA conferences that played this fall (skipping one or two whose play extends into the spring). Here's what we found:

(Percentages are rounded to the closest half-percent and are based on our own count and we might be off a little if we missed a result or a postponed game got played and we missed it). Very Close is 7 points or closer; Somewhat Close is a winning margin of 8 to 14 points; Not-Close is a winning margin of 21 points or more.

Conference	% Very Close Games	% Somewhat Close Games	% Not-Close Games
Big 10	28.5%	33%	33%
Big Rivers	42%	21%	21%
MAC	25%	14%	58%
Liberty D1AA	18.5%	15%	52%
Liberty D1	16%	27%	49%
MAC	25%	14%	58%
MARC	21%	12%	48.5%
Rocky Mountain	11%	0%	72%
Rugby East	30.6	17%	33%
SCRC	15.5%	8%	50%
Southern Conference	20%	0%	67%

This is one set of measurements, but it is educational.

Almost two-thirds of Big Rivers games were within two tries, which is pretty impressive. The Big 10, at 61.5%, is close to that metric. It also follows that the fewest blowouts would be in those conferences, and indeed Big Rivers has the fewest lopsided games. The second-most, though, is a tie between the Big 10 and Rugby East.

What this tells us is something we've known for a while—the Big Rivers and the Big 10 both are the right kinds of conferences for the teams that are competing in them. They are like-minded schools and teams (we knew that already) and that has translated into competitveness—more close games than blowouts.

But that's not the whole story. There's also success. And success outside your conference. Let's have a look, then, at the Rugby East. The internal competitiveness scores for the Rugby East are good—it's probably the third-best conference in that metric. But it's also a large conference, making it more likely that the bell curve of competitiveness will be wide. So it is ... Navy is currently the best team in the country. Southern Virginia, meanwhile, while a good team, had four lopsided losses.

But as the Rugby East travels to play other teams, you see the quality of this conference. Since the conference's inception, the record of Rugby East teams against NCR teams not in the conference is an astonishing 62-7. In NCR D1's three playoffs since 2021, Rugby East teams have taken five of the six spots in the final. The results between Rugby East teams and D1A teams outside Rugby East since the fall of 2021 reveals a 19-9 record in favor of Rugby East. That includes two D1A championships, two NCR D1 championships (including the one the conference will win this coming weekend), and one NCR D1AA championship.

This past weekend, Rugby East teams won two out of three bowl games at the CRAA Fall Classic—Mount St. Mary's beating Michigan State and Penn State beating Ohio State. Southern Virginia lost to Arkansas State but that was not a surprise given how strong ASU has been. In the NCR D1 playoffs, both Notre Dame College and St. Bonaventure won games. Overall Rugby East teams are 4-1 in this year's NCR D1 playoffs.

What we see overall in the Rugby East is that the intense competition makes everyone better. Penn State showed that with their well-taken win over Ohio State. Yes OSU was injury-hit, and Penn State was able to get a couple of players available and healthy, but Penn State's lessons in the speed of play in the Rugby East allowed them to play very fast.

This is how rugby programs find success, through competition. The teams that come out of Rugby East are primed to win in any playoff because they understand how to handle pressure. Of course that doesn't mean the D1A playoffs are a foregone conclusion. There are other teams that put themselves in difficult circumstances in order to play better. The California Conference scores pretty well, too, and independent teams are free to make their schedules as difficult as possible. Other teams, such as Cal, Lindenwood, and BYU, act almost as independent teams, augmenting their conference schedules with additional difficult games.

Who Plays in the Toughest Conference?

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