At the end of every bowl season, the ESPN talking heads love to heap praise on whatever conference has the best bowl record. What they fail to mention is the quality of opponent for “said” conference.

We broke down the average computer ranking of the bowl opponents for each of the power conferences to see which, on paper, has the toughest row to hoe this bowl season. Here is what we found...

Average computer ranking for each conference's bowl opponents:
17.00 - SEC
17.80 - Pac-10
21.00 - Big Ten
26.57 - Big 12
38.00 - ACC
44.00 - Big East

So, what does this mean? The SEC and Pac-10 have the toughest bowl games based on computer ranking. The Big East and ACC have the easiest bowl schedules. It's just something to consider when evaluating a conference's bowl success at the end of the day. More details after the jump...

ACC Opponents (computer ranking)
39 Navy
32 WVU
47 Wisconsin
29 Cal
44 Rutgers
54 Nevada
53 Vanderbilt
49 LSU
26 Nebraska
11 Cincinnati

Big East Opponents (computer ranking)
91 Memphis
25 UNC
46 NC State
28 Oregon State
20 Virginia Tech
52 Buffalo

Big Ten Opponents (computer ranking)
22 Florida State
23 Missouri
36 Kansas
41 South Carolina
13 Georgia
8 USC
4 Texas

Pac-10 Opponents (computer ranking)
16 BYU
34 Miami
17 Oklahoma State
15 Pittsburgh
7 Penn State

SEC Opponents (computer ranking)
21 Boston College
14 Georgia Tech
33 Iowa
18 Michigan State
5 Texas Tech
42 East Carolina
3 Utah
1 Oklahoma

Big 12 Opponents (computer ranking)
27 Northwestern
24 Oregon
55 Minnesota
37 Clemson
31 Ole Miss
10 Ohio State
2 Florida