Every year, there is a great debate about which is the best conference. Some people will look at teams in the top 25, others the out of conference records or how many teams make the NCAA tournament, or any of hundreds of other criteria.

The problem with most of these different criteria is that they are each flawed in some sense. Take, for example, the conference RPI. The ACC has the best overall conference RPI, but that is mostly due to the top two teams. Also, the difference between the top conference and the forth conference in terms of conference RPI is less than .01, hardly a distinguishing number.

It seems as if there is no good way to stay definitively that one conference is better than another other than just watching the teams play, which is too subjective to be used. For this reason, I am not going to partake in this particular debate today. What I will try to do is find the toughest conference.

What do I mean by toughest? Not the most physical or the one with the best defenders, I essentially mean the conference with the most teams you do not want to face in March. Now, granted, the Big East has the most teams, so they have an edge. Based on the way I took the numbers, though, I have tried to eliminate that advantage. Since I am not trying to find the best conference, I will only be looking at the top nine teams, but in some cases fewer. I chose nine since it would encompass all the bubble teams from the various conferences.

First, let’s compare the RPIs of the nine teams from each of the power conferences:

Teams 1-9 RPI
Conference	Avg. RPI	Avg. Rank
ACC	.5889	47
Big 12	.5857	47
Big East	.6034	26
Big Ten	.5614	77
Pac-10	.5818	51
SEC	.5761	64

However, when you look at it that way, the top teams are being weighed down by the bottom ones. So, now, we will look at how the top four in each conference compare:

Teams 1-4 RPI
Conference	Avg. RPI	Avg. Rank
ACC	.6259	20
Big 12	.6245	26
Big East	.6210	16
Big Ten	.6028	24
Pac-10	.6241	17
SEC	.6084	28

And how the 5-9 teams compare:

Teams 5-9 RPI
Conference	Avg. RPI	Avg. Rank
ACC	.5592	69
Big 12	.5639	63
Big East	.5913	34
Big Ten	.5259	121
Pac-10	.5541	78
SEC	.5471	92

Finally, we want to look at just the top half of each conference, in an effort to account for the size difference of the conferences. In the case of an odd number, I rounded up.

Top Half
Conference	Avg. RPI	Avg. Rank
ACC	.6068	33
Big 12	.6045	29
Big East	.6075	23
Big Ten	.5889	41
Pac-10	.6030	30
SEC	.5993	35

The results are fairly conclusive. The Big East has the most competitive teams. Especially when you look at the teams in the middle of the conference, it becomes clear how deep the Big East is. People will say that it doesn’t mean the Big East is the best conference, but that is not my argument. My point is that when it comes to being battle-tested, the Big East teams will have an advantage over other conferences. And at a time when every game could be your last, you need every edge you can get.