Green Mountain Grumbles: SEC Hype Warranted?

It seems to have become commonly accepted knowledge that the SEC is football's best conference.  In fact, it has gotten to the point that the College Football pundits stick to debating which conference is No. 2, assuming there is no question that the Southeast is No. 1 (the hot trend this year, of course, is hopping behind the Big 12 as No. 2, and who can argue with those QB's?). 

A quick gander at the current polls in College Football shows that the SEC has two teams in the top five of both the AP and the Coaches Poll, Alabama (No. 2 and No. 4 respectively) and LSU (No. 3 and No. 2 respectively), and six teams in the top 25 overall (Georgia, Florida, Auburn, and Vanderbilt).  This ties them with the Big 12, who also has six teams in each poll (Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas, and Oklahoma State).

But is this general acceptance of the SEC as No. 1 warranted?  Fans of the SEC often point to the Non-conference records of the team as proof that their teams play in the superior conference. 

At the end of the day, it matters little, but just for fun, here are the numbers.  Last season, over, the SEC was 96-59 overall, and a whopping 48-11 in out-of-conference games.  Additionally, SEC teams went 6-2 in bowl games, with the losses by Florida (to Michigan) and Arkansas (to Missouri). 

This year, so far, the SEC is 38-16 overall, and 29-6 in out-of-conference games.  In fact, only five teams have lost an out of conference game, and only Mississippi State has lost two.  On the surface, this does appear to be conference dominance, but who have they played?

Alabama has three O.O.C. wins against Clemson, Western Kentucky, and Tulane.  They have one more O.O.C. game, against Arkansas State.  While this is not exactly a who's-who of contending teams, Alabama is one of the surprise teams this year.  So they would not be expected to have a top-flight non-conference schedule. 

The defending champions, LSU, would be expected to have that type of schedule.  At this point in the season, the Tigers are 2-0 O.O.C., with wins against D-1AA Appalachian St. and Sun Belt sweetheart North Texas Mean Green who had 77 points hung on them by Rice last week. 

They had a game against Troy that they could not play because of hurricanes, that they will make up on November 15.  Their only other upcoming O.O.C. game is against Tulane. 

Georgia, the preseason No. 1, plays Georgia Southern, Central Michigan, Arizona State, and Georgia Tech.  In fact, the SEC only had six games against teams that were in the preseason AP Top 25: No. 24 Wake Forest (plays against Vanderbilt, and beat Mississippi), No. 15 Arizona State (lost to Georgia), No. 8 Clemson (plays South Carolina, lost to Alabama), and No. 9 West Virginia (plays Auburn). 

Only one of those teams, Wake Forest, is ranked currently in the Top 25 (at No. 25).

The fact is, the reason that the SEC teams tend to have a great Strength Of Schedule is that many of the teams within the conference are ranked.  It is, therefore, difficult to bump an SEC team out of the rankings because the only really challenging teams they play are other SEC teams, making it difficult to compare them to the elites of other conferences. 

Because it is agreed that the SEC is the best conference, victories against other SEC teams elicit high climbs in the rankings, and losses to the SEC rationalize lower falls in the polls than other teams.

A double standard is also present.  In the face of the fact that SEC conference games tend to be low scoring, this is attributed to the dominant defenses in the league.  However, at the same time, the Big 12's high scoring games is chalked up by the ESPN analysts to the porous defenses within that conference. 

Is it not just as likely that the Big 12 offenses are that good, and the SEC offenses are that weak?  It is because the SEC is viewed as so dominant that it is argued that the defenses are the correct explanation.

This is the norm in College Football, of course.  There is always the "Dominant Conference" that is all over the preseason polls and professes to have all of the best coaches, players, and rivalries.  Right now, the SEC, the Big 12, and the PAC-10 seem to be in upswings, the Big 10 has seemed to level out from its descent in the early part of the decade, and the ACC and Big East are still dropping. 

Football is a cyclical game, and wherever the focus of the Preseason Polls is, that conference is likely to receive the benefit of rosy-colored viewing of their faults.  The fact is, most of the flaws in College Football are due to this system.  The Preseason Polls are useless, and not at all accurate, and yet they essentially help to decide how high different teams can get. 

Had Boise State or been in the preseason top 25, one could expect either of them to have made it into the top 5 this season easily. Meanwhile teams like Clemson, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, and others that were ranked in the preseason, have had large drop-offs.

The bottom line is, the SEC is not as high above the rest of the College Football World as ESPN would have you believe, but until a playoff system is (hopefully) put into place, these types of situations will continue to crop up.