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I would just like to share some thoughts that have been reoccurring in my mind day in and day out as I read a lot of your blogs if that's ok...
As we all know, college football is approaching, and temperaments, anticipation, nervousness, cockiness, dread, anguish, and just plain overall joy are some of the numerous feelings that we all as fans are enduring. But there is one major feeling all die hard fans seem to have in common...and that's pride.
Countless times I have seen or heard or even read spectators of the sport claim that there conference is "easily the best conference in college football". And as an avid SEC fan I am guilty of such speculation, but the more and more I read that same old argument, I began to realize how ignorant we as fans can be.
I have a question, a question that almost answers the original question of "which conference is the best?", and that question is..."How and the hell can you actually tell which conference is the best?" I also have an answer for that question—YOU CAN'T!
The fact of the matter is that when one team beats another, than they are obviously the better team that year, it has nothing to do with conferences.
Last year, Florida obviously beat Oklahoma in the championship game, so does that mean that the SEC overall was better than the Big-12? No, it does not. Does that mean that because the SEC has the title that were better than everyone else?? No, once again.
Yes we can sit here and compare bowl records, or we can look at our OOC record and make assumptions, but unless each team from one conference plays each team from another conference, there is really no way to tell.
Bragging rights is the one thing that we as fans are rewarded once our team has a huge victory or major accomplishment, but that shouldn't extend any farther than the obvious.
What I mean by that is, if team A beats team B that particular year, than team A and all its fans has bragging rights over team B until the outcome of the next time they play. We don't have bragging rights over team B's entire conference, why? Because we didn't beat team B's entire conference.
Sure there are conferences that are far below the talent level of other conferences, far enough to where it is obvious that there best team couldn't hang with our worst, but when you toss the word "easily" into the equation, your still referring to all the conferences, and when make such an assumption as that, your making an...well...you know the saying.
I think were all guilty of such assumptions at one point or another, and I do mean we ALL. I was listening to Fox Sports Radio the other day and found hypocrisy at it's finest. The host was rambling on about how SEC fans are ignorant because we walk around beating our chest, claiming that "we're the best."
Yet, he wen't on to do the same thing about the Pac-10. Folks, once again, WE ALL DO IT.
Personally, if UT doesn’t make it to the big dance, or any BCS bowl game ( which happens more often than not these days alas ), I will root on whichever SEC team does make it. And afterwards should the SEC have a win on their bowl record, we can say “ Our top SEC team was better than your top conference team!”, or the other way around ( god forbid ) but that is all we can say.
In closing…
It isn’t a bad thing to take pride in the conference that your team bleeds, sweats, crawls, and fights their way to the top of (if you are so fortunate), but let’s not let get carried away and bandwagon the team that put your conference in the spotlight when your team couldn’t, it’s really rather pathetic to an extreme. Let us also take pride in the fact that were not Notre Dame fans…j/k Irish.
One more thing…GO VOLS!
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