The rivalries and comparisons of major college conferences are usually settled in bowl games.  Advocates and fans of each conference often claim superiority of talent due to speed, size, smarts, and recruiting star ratings.  Let’s break down the number of draftees from each conference by round:

The SEC, as expected, had the most first round picks in the 2009 draft.  The Big 12 had a strong first round, but ended up even with the Big 10 for total number of draftees.

Following is a draft rating chart that weights the rankings for draft rounds (first round picks are more valuable that sixth) and the number of schools in each conference:

When the rankings are weighted, the SEC barely hangs on to a lead over the PAC 10.  The Big East leapfrogs the Big 10 and Big 12 due to having only eight schools in their conference.  The ACC drops down to last place due to having twelve schools in the conference and several late round picks.

While the rankings in both of the above charts shouldn’t be surprising, all of the conferences scored much more closely than some might expect.  All in all, the biggest college football conferences contributed rather evenly to the NFL in 2009.