Pac-10 Football Is Better Than SEC Football: Part Four

Part Four of this series, "Pac-10 Football Is Better Than SEC Football," examines the fact that there is more (or at least equal) parity in the Pac-10 than the SEC.

Yes, that's right—top to bottom, the Pac-10 is a better football conference.  Anybody can beat anybody.

There's nothing that hurts my ears more than hearing SEC fans cry out that the Pac-10 only has a few quality teams, while in the SEC, every team competes.  To put it in the words of one of these uninformed fans, Stephen Williams, "The Pac-10 has been a top-heavy conference riding the success of USC."

This is the basis of every argument that an SEC fan makes—every conference game is huge because every team is so good.  Unfortunately for them, it is a myth.

SEC fans use the myth to claim that somehow teams play each other tougher when it's a conference game.  Alabama fan Nic Gulas says, "Four of the games that you picked out for comparison [between USC and LSU] are rivalry games for LSU.  Arkanas battles for the Golden Boot year in and year out and Auburn-LSU is quite an intense and defensive game."

Somehow, Arkansas and Auburn play LSU tougher than USC—all because it's a conference game.  As if those same teams were trying any less hard against USC.

SEC fans also use the myth in order to justify their horrific non-conference scheduling.  My main man Jordan Coleman argues, "The Pac-10 has to schedule a couple good out of conference games because the conference games are pretty weak at best compared to the SEC.  The SEC always has 5-7 teams ranked in the top 25 in conference so it all equals out."

The arguments are always the same from an SEC fan: Their conference is the greatest, so that justifies everything.  It's time to look at the facts.

If the SEC is so great top to bottom, as all SEC fans claim, why are there never big-time upsets within the conference?  The SEC picture always seems to shape up just as planned.

Let's compare Street and Smith's preseason predictions for each conference with the final standings from the 2007 football season.

Pac-10

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