When all the conference realignment shakes out, who will have the better conference: the Big 12 or the Pac-10?

There are a million different ways to try to determine the answer, but ESPN has come up with an interesting way of looking at things: trying to determine which conference has more “prestige” schools.

On the site, ESPN is asking fans to rank the 21 teams in the Big 12 and Pac-10 “in order of the prestige you think they bring to the college sports scene.”

I have to admit that the results are pretty intriguing.

Keep in mind that fans are voting on prestige and not the actual wins and losses of each athletic team. Prestige, to me, relates more to the fans’ perception of a university’s athletic department.

Here are the results as of 2 p.m. Thursday:

1. Texas
2. USC
3. Oklahoma
4. UCLA
5. Oregon
6. California
7. Texas A&M
8. Stanford
9. Oklahoma State
10. Kansas
11. Washington
12. Arizona
13. Texas Tech
14. Missouri
15. Arizona State
16. Oregon State
17. Kansas State
18. Colorado
19. Baylor
20. Iowa State
21. Washington State

A few thoughts right away:

• To me, this explains why a lot of national media attention was focusing specifically on whether Kansas was going to get left out of the realignment picture. According to this public opinion ranking on ESPN, KU is in the top half of the 21 schools listed.

Even though KU struggled in most sports in 2009-10, the perception of it being a strong athletic department hasn’t seemed to change much in the public’s eye.

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Unfortunately for KU fans, “prestige” doesn’t mean as much to potential conferences as “TV markets available” in this age of college athletics.

• Though many KU fans were worried (and for good reason) about the conference realignment possibilities, KU actually might have been in the best shape of the “Forgotten Five” — KU, Missouri, Kansas State, Baylor and Iowa State.

Looking at these public opinion rankings, KU is higher than the other four, though Missouri (14th) isn’t too far behind.

Kansas State (17th), Baylor (19th) and Iowa State (20th) would have had more reason to worry that if the Big 12 dissolved, they might have been headed for a lesser conference.

• The Pac-10 is getting one school from the Big 12 (Colorado), but its public-opinion ranking isn’t exactly stellar (18th). The Buffs did seem to jump pretty quickly when the offer was given to join the Pac-10.

So, as of now, which new conference has the most prestige?

For help with that answer, I gave a point value to every school based on their prestige ranking. Texas received 21 points, USC 20 points and so on, all the way down to Washington State with 1 point.

Here’s how the conferences ranked:

Big 12 (without Colorado) — 10 teams, 107 points (10.7 prestige points per team)
Pac-10 (with Colorado) — 11 teams, 124 points (11.3 points per team)

If you look at things that way, the Pac-10 edges out the Big 12 in terms of average prestige ranking.

In case you were wondering, if the Pac-10 had become the Pac-16 (adding Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech as was first rumored), its prestige ranking would have jumped from 11.3 points per team to 12.6 points per team.

It’s hard to blame Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott for trying to enhance his conference by extending an invitation to some of the most highly thought-of teams in the Big 12.