Which conference produces the most thugs?

This is a fun one.  Take NFL arrest data and cross reference it with college data from ESPN  (filling in the blanks where necessary).  This gives you the thugs per conference.  I normalized the data to the arrests/player (otherwise, the biggest conferences have the mosts arrests and that's not really insightful).  The result:

NFL Players Arrests by College Conference in the last Five Years

meh?  I was hoping the SEC would kill this one.  Didn't really expect the Pac 10 to win.  Interestingly, this trend holds up on any cut of the data (ie if you look at only the last 2, 3, or 4 years instead of the last 5, you still get the Pac 10 as the most felonious conference).  The Big 10 doesn't look so high and mighty anymore; we're producing just as many bad seeds as the rest of the conferences (if not more).  So much for our visions of a clean conference.  At least I get the Big 10 network on Direct TV.  I can see all of these future felons in HD.

I should note that this data only includes active NFL players.  Maurice Clarett doesn't get dropped in to OSU #s b/c he's out of the NFL.  I think looking at crimes committed by ex-NFLers would be too depressing to include.

Here is the number of arrests and arrests per player by college (Top Ten):

NFL Arrests by Player's College (Top Ten)

ugh.  I'm a huge Rich Rod fan.  I think he was the perfect hire for Michigan.  I'm convinced he'll turn UM into a Florida clone, which will spell OSU death. I just finished watching the 2007 Illinois/OSU game and it was clear how much trouble that team has defending a good spread option attack. In a few years, he'll have the Wolverines tearing up the Buckeyes (while still inexplicably dropping a game here and there to a team it should easily beat -- such is college football in the 85 scholarship era)

Still, this ain't good. In fairness, 6 of the 11 arrests are from 1 player (Pacman).   Still  WVU leads the NFL in player arrests and their players are by far and away the most likely to get arrested.  There's nearly a 1:1 ratio between Mountaineers in the NFL and arrests.  I think some of this is the reality of trying to win at a tier 2 school.  You have to take players the big boys won't touch (see: Moss, Randy or Devine, Noel for recent examples out of the Mountain State).

In any event, something to keep an eye on as he continues to recruit his type of player.