I'm Back: Pac-10 Football Is Better Than SEC Football (Part Three)

2004
Auburn	10	2	u
Cal	16	9	u
Arizona State	nr	19	u
USC	1	1
Tennessee	13	13
Oregon	23	nr	d
Georgia	3	7	d
LSU	4	16	d
Florida	14	nr	d

2003
Washington State	nr	9	u
Ole Miss	nr	13	u
LSU	14	2	u
USC	11	1	u
Georgia	10	7	u
Florida	23	24	d*
Tennessee	13	15	d*
Alabama	23	nr	d
Washington	12	nr	d
Auburn	5	nr	d

2002
Alabama	23	11	u
USC	18	4	u
Auburn	nr	14	u
Georgia	9	3	u
Washington State	14	10	u
LSU	15	nr	d
Oregon	13	nr	d
Washington	12	nr	d
Florida	6	nr	d
Tennessee	5	nr	d

When you take a close look at these polls, it becomes clear that SEC is overrated every year in the pre-season polls. If you disregard teams which only moved 3 positions or less (the teams with *’s), you come out with the following:

SEC teams have risen from their pre-season poll position 12 times. They have fallen 15 times.

Pac-10 teams have risen from their pre-season poll position 12 times. They have fallen 9 times.

When you start the season in the Top 10, you expect great things from that team that year. A pre-season Top 10 SEC team has failed to finish in the Top 25 four times since 2002. Tennessee and Florida started 2002 as the No. 5 and 6 teams in the country, respectively.

Auburn entered 2003 at No. 5, and Tennessee entered 2005 as No. 3. All of these teams finished unranked by the end of the season. That has never happened to a Pac-10 school.

This should make you raise your eyebrows, SEC fans. Why do so many pre-season Top 10 SEC teams fall completely off the radars into miserable seasons?

The answer is that SEC teams are vastly overrated by the media and so they crash and burn once they put on their helmets.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Pac-10 teams are vastly underrated to start the season. A Pac-10 school has started the season unranked and finished in the Top 25 a whopping eight times since 2003. The SEC has had three teams accomplish that same feat since 2002.

The bottom line is that if the media sees any SEC team with any talent whatsoever, they will be in the pre-season Top 25. This is why so many SEC schools crash and burn after receiving high pre-season rankings, and it is also why so few SEC schools jump from not being ranked to being in the Top 25 by season’s end.

On to Part 4.