SEC Envy

Secondly, the SEC went to nine bowl games last year and won seven including their two BCS bowls (NC game and Sugar), which means they are beating quality teams from other conferences in the postseason as well.

While the SEC is still playing some cream puffs in the early non-conference, so is everyone else. But, most importantly, the SEC teams are scheduling some good games, too. In fact, this year the SEC is playing the following non-conference:

• Arkansas vs. Texas
• Tennessee vs. UCLA
• Georgia vs. Arizona State
• Alabama vs. Clemson
• Florida vs. Miami
• Florida vs. Florida State
• South Carolina vs. Clemson
• Georgia vs. Georgia Tech
• Auburn vs. West Virginia

It should be noted that while all of these teams are not particularly dangerous this year, many of them are standing in-state rivalries (such as Florida vs. Florida State and Miami, as well as Georgia vs. Georgia Tech). By and large, these teams were selected to provide strength of schedule, and that has been accomplished.

There are many ways to compare conferences, but so many of them are conjecture or opinion.  Therefore, while the author of the Pac-10 series wants to discount top-25 finishes and national championships, it seems difficult to stay fact-based if you deviate too much from measurable things. So, here are some measurable, verifiable facts about the SEC that tend to be hard to assail:

• Since conference expansion (1992), the conference has won more national championships than any other. The SEC has won six in that period, including three since 2000 and the last two in a row. This doesn't even count the fact that Auburn went 13-0 a few years back and was the odd-team out in the BCS calculations, so they weren't even allowed to play for it.
• The SEC ended the season with the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the final polls last year.
• An SEC player won the Heisman last year (Tebow), and an SEC player was also the runner up (McFadden). In fact, McFadden was the runner up two years in a row.
• The SEC has more players in the pros than any other conference.
• The SEC has five coaches who have won national championship games (twice as many as any other conference).
• The SEC went to nine bowl games last year and won seven of them, including both BCS games they attended. The bowl losses were by Florida to a Michigan team that was playing lights out because their seniors (Henne, Hart, etc.) had never won a bowl game, and the whole team wanted to send Lloyd Carr out with a win. The other was by Arkansas who was being coached by an interim coach because Houston Nutt resigned and promptly landed at Ole Miss and didn't stay to coach the Cotton Bowl game.
• The SEC has by far the highest attendance of any league.
• The SEC is by far the highest revenue-producing conference of any league.
• The SEC consistently produces recruiting classes that are widely held to be among the very best. At least eight SEC teams usually end up in the top-30 recruiting classes, using a sampling of recruiting class data.

Those are all facts that can be verified and cannot be argued. While one could enhance these facts by creating opinions and applying them, one doesn't need to do that. Facts are stubborn things. And in this case, it seems that they fairly consistently back up the predominant thinking among college football fans. The SEC is the top conference.

Now if I could only figure out why that seems to be such a bad thing to so many people. That keeps eluding me.

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