Jackson Free Press

There is just one http://www.espn.com/college-football/scoreboard">college-football game left to play this season. Clemson University and the University of Alabama will play on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. on ESPN in the national championship game.

As the 2016-2017 season comes to an end, it seems a good time to look back at how the conferences performed during the bowl season. Just to compare conferences on an equal footing, let’s first a look at the “Power Five” conferences and then the “Group of Five” conferences.

The clear winner of the http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-acc-is-having-a-bowl-season-for-the-ages/">Power Five is the Atlantic Coast Conference. Currently, the ACC has 8-3 bowl record, with Clemson still to play in this year’s title game.

Speaking of Clemson, the Tigers made a statement by shutting out Ohio State University 31-0 in a semifinal game. Florida State University beating the University of Michigan 33-32 in the Orange Bowl in the ACC’s other “New Year’s Six” game.

The ACC crushed nearly every other Power Five conference, going 3-1 against the Big Ten, 3-1 against the Southeastern Conference, and 1-0 against the Big 12. Only the Pac 12 will finish with a winning record against the ACC, as Stanford University won 25-23 over the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Finishing with a 4-2 bowl record means the Big 12 is the only other Power Five conference to finish with a winning record. The Big 12 finished 2-1 against the SEC, 1-0 against the Mountain West Conference and Pac 12, but 0-1 against the ACC. The University of Oklahoma did bring the conference a win in its New Year’s Six game. Strangely, the Big 12 didn’t play the Big Ten this bowl season.

It was an up-and-down season for the SEC, and it showed in the bowl games as the conference went 6-6. The SEC got 12 out of 14 teams into bowl games, with Mississippi State University reaching the postseason with a 5-7 record.

Both the East and West in the SEC went 3-3 in bowl games. The conference finished 2-0 against the Big Ten, and 1-0 against the Mid-American Conference and the Pac 12. The flipside is that SEC also went 1-3 against the ACC, 0-1 against the American Athletic Conference and 1-2 against the Big 12. The University of Alabama, MSU, Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Georgia brought home wins for the conference.

If Alabama loses to Clemson, the SEC will finish with a losing record in bowl games.

Just like the SEC, the Pac 12 has a .500 record in bowls at 3-3. This wasn’t a stellar postseason for the conference, but the University of Southern California did win the Rose Bowl to give the Pac-12 a victory in a New Year’s Six game.

The Pac-12 will finish with a 1-0 record against the ACC, 2-1 against the Big Ten, and 0-1 against the Big-12 and the SEC. It can still claim it owns a winning record against the best conference in the ACC.

No Power Five conference got pushed around and beat up like the Big Ten. The conference will finish 3-7 in bowl games and got blasted in the College Football Playoffs for the second year in a row.

Since Ohio State University won the title in the first year of the playoff in 2014, the Big Ten has been outscored 69-0 in two playoff games. The Big Ten also lost in the Rose Bowl and the Orange Bowl, with the University of Wisconsin pulling out the only New Year’s Six bowl win.

The Big Ten will finish with a losing record against the SEC at 0-2, ACC at 1-3, and Pac-12 at 1-2. Wisconsin’s win against Western Michigan University give the Big Ten a 1-0 record over the MAC for its only winning record over another conference.

In the Group of Five conferences, the Sun Belt ended up the big winner, with a 4-2 record. The Sun Belt beat up on the other Group of Five, going 2-0 against the MAC and 1-1 against both Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference.

Both C-USA and the MWC went 4-3 in bowl games. The University of Southern Mississippi was the only team out of C-USA to beat a Sun Belt team.

C-USA went 2-0 against the ACC, and 1-0 against the Sun Belt and MAC, but it also dropped to 0-2 against the MWC and 0-1 against the United States Military Academy, which is an independent in football.

The MWC finished 2-0 over C-USA, 1-0 against the AAC, 1-1 against the Sun Belt, and 0-1 against the Big 12 and against Brigham Young University, which plays football as an independent. Neither C-USA nor the MWC won against a Power Five conference or football independents.

Many believed during the season that the American Athletic Conference was the best in the Group of Five. That image was shattered after the conference went 2-5 in bowl games.

The best moment for the AAC ended up being a University of South Florida win over the University of South Carolina out of the SEC. The other bowl win came against the lowly MAC. The AAC went 0-1 against the ACC, MWC and Sun Belt, with a 0-2 record against C-USA .

If the bowl season was a disaster for the Big Ten in the Power Five, then it ended up being an outright nightmare for the Mid-American Conference. The MAC finished the postseason at 0-6, making it the only conference not to win a bowl game this season.

Even previous undefeated Western Michigan couldn’t save the conference in its New Year’s Six game. The MAC lost to the SEC, Big Ten, Sun Belt, AAC and C-USA in bowl games.