I ran through the SEC stats and figured I'd throw out some numbers and tables as I'm not able to do a thorough writeup and analysis today. There were 72.57 plays per team, on average, in Big 12 games last year. This compares to a figure of 65.15 for the SEC. So right off the bat we see that there was over 11% "more football" played in a 2008 Big 12 game. This difference is actually less than I thought it would be, but facts are stubborn things. Below are two tables related to 2008 pace figures for every team in the two conferences. The first table is the actual pace played by plays per team per game. This is the most relevant when trying to reality check actual per game stats. The second table is the adjusted pace rating for each team after accounting for opponents. Essentially the pace in each game is determined by the two teams playing in it so the usual iterative analysis can be used to isolate each team's average contribution to their games' pace numbers. Keep in mind that to determine the number of plays that a game between two teams would be expected to see per team, you don't just average the pace ratings. The Log 5 method should be utilized, which for our case is:
ExPlays = ((APly * BPly)/AvPly)/((APly * BPly)/AvPly + ((1-APly)*(1-BPly)/(1-AvPly)))
With this method, the calculation is to add the two teams' pace figures together and then subtract the overall average pace, which is 71.0 with this data set.
Anyway, the two tables:
| Actual Played Pace | ||
|---|---|---|
| School | PPG | Conf |
| Oklahoma | 77.7 | B12 |
| Kansas St. | 75.8 | B12 |
| Missouri | 74.3 | B12 |
| Kansas | 73.7 | B12 |
| Iowa St. | 73.3 | B12 |
| Texas A&M | 72.1 | B12 |
| Texas Tech | 72.1 | B12 |
| Colorado | 71.8 | B12 |
| Oklahoma St. | 70.9 | B12 |
| Baylor | 70.3 | B12 |
| Texas | 70.3 | B12 |
| Arkansas | 69.4 | SEC |
| LSU | 68.4 | SEC |
| Nebraska | 67.6 | B12 |
| Mississippi | 66.4 | SEC |
| Kentucky | 66.3 | SEC |
| Auburn | 66.3 | SEC |
| South Carolina | 65.3 | SEC |
| Mississippi St. | 64.4 | SEC |
| Alabama | 64.0 | SEC |
| Georgia | 63.6 | SEC |
| Florida | 63.4 | SEC |
| Vanderbilt | 62.6 | SEC |
| Tennessee | 62.3 | SEC |
| Team Pace Rating | ||
|---|---|---|
| School | PPG | Conf |
| Oklahoma | 79.0 | B12 |
| Kansas St. | 75.6 | B12 |
| Missouri | 74.9 | B12 |
| Iowa St. | 74.3 | B12 |
| Kansas | 73.5 | B12 |
| Texas Tech | 73.4 | B12 |
| Colorado | 72.8 | B12 |
| Arkansas | 72.5 | SEC |
| LSU | 72.5 | SEC |
| Texas A&M | 72.0 | B12 |
| Kentucky | 71.3 | SEC |
| Baylor | 70.9 | B12 |
| Mississippi | 70.7 | SEC |
| Oklahoma St. | 70.6 | B12 |
| Auburn | 70.3 | SEC |
| Texas | 69.5 | B12 |
| South Carolina | 68.9 | SEC |
| Georgia | 67.8 | SEC |
| Mississippi St. | 67.7 | SEC |
| Alabama | 67.5 | SEC |
| Florida | 67.1 | SEC |
| Tennessee | 67.0 | SEC |
| Vanderbilt | 66.9 | SEC |
| Nebraska | 66.4 | B12 |
There are the numbers. Do with them what you will.
Edit - Forgot to mention that the conference averages at the top are based only on each conference's games but the two tables are based on those games plus the three interconference matchups from last season (Arkansas @ Texas, Ole Miss vs. Texas Tech, Florida vs. Oklahoma).
Second Edit - I refined the calculation method for the team ratings, which reduced the RMS error by just over 1%. I ran a trial with a different method - using percentage of expected plays instead of difference - but the error was slightly greater although the values were very similar. Also corrected the part about how to predict pace between two teams.