There are really multiple ways of looking at the "strength" of leagues. One way is the number of bids, and that generally measures depth of quality teams, thoough one could argue it does so in a somewhat gross manner. So a league with 4 bids is stronger than one with 3 and weaker than 1 with 6. Assuming membership is relatively close, that gives some idea of how good a conference is overall. But looking at how the various teams actually perform in the post season is another way to value conference strength. Does a league regularly send teams deep into the tourney? Or produce Final Four teams, and national Championship game participants. So if you look at 2004 for example, the Big East, SEC, ACC and CUSA all got 6 bids. So looking at bids, you have 4 equal leagues. But if you dig a bit deeper, you find that the CUSA entrants wsere all gone by the Sweet 16. In fact only 1 of 6 got that far, while the ACC had 2 Final four teams, while the Big East and the SEC each had 1. UConn from the Big East beat Georgia Tech of the ACC in the Championship game. What does that say about the relative strengths of the ACC, BE and SEC? Probably one could make a case that overall, at least in 2004 the ACC was the better league, but the Big East had the best team. If you look at the results by round: 32-ACC: 6 BE:5, S16-ACC:3 BE:3, E8-ACC:3, BE:1, FF-ACC:2 BE:1 CG-ACC:1 BE:1, Title:BE. You could probably make an argument on either side. The Big East had the best team, but the ACC had more teams make deeper runs. Both had dreck at the bottom though neither had the level of dreck they have today. I think we'll see something similar between the Catholic Big East and the A12. They'll get a similar number of bids, you'd have to guess in a typical year, UConn, Cincy, Temple and Memphis would be likely as would Georgetown, Marquette, Butler and maybe Villanova. the issue will be whether either one produces teams that are capable of going deep, challenging for a national championship. I have my doubts that the C-7 will do that. I have some doubts about the A-12 too, just not as many.