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Bradley H -> RE: College Football (Future Vikings!) (10/14/2014 2:50:37 PM)
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ORIGINAL: djskillz
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ORIGINAL: Bradley H
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ORIGINAL: djskillz
Brad, we've been over this before. There certainly is. Because the 8th best team in the SEC should not be compared with the 2nd best team in the Pac12 or Big10 or ACC, and vice versa. They are not even matchups to determine a better conference, especially given how small the sample size is.
And yes, they have more busts, but they also have more stars. If you took the top 8-10 teams from the SEC and the top 8-10 teams from any other conference, the same numbers would apply. The "top heavy" argument that Stoops said is a joke at this point too. There was a stat the other day that there have now been 11 SEC teams ranked in the top 5 in the country in the last 2 1/2 seasons. ELEVEN. The only ones that haven't are Vandy/UT/UK.
Not sure what you are referring to with the 2nd best team or 8th best team. In the era, USC had some dominant teams and won four games against SEC programs. LSU won five against PAC programs. The Pac 10/12 recorded zero wins against Vandy, Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Kentucky, who were perennial dogs over that span. It isn't like they were playing the cupcakes of the conference. Christ, even UCLA won three or four games and they were mediocre, at-best. In return, the SEC was beating up on Washington State, Oregon State, ASU and Arizona.
We did this exercise once. I'm not going to do it again. In the vast majority of matchups it was a top 2-3 team that season in one conference playing the 7th-9th best team in the other conference, or something of the like. Almost never did you have a 2 against a 2 or even a 3 against a 5, etc. Again, it's complete apples and oranges. Conference vs. conference record when that's the setup is a terrible way of measuring.
Again I disagree. The BCS era lasted 16 years. It isn't as if it was a small sampling. At the end of the day, the Pac 10/12 was .500 against the vaunted SEC. It is one of the greatest untold stories in college football history. A classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
Nobody disagrees that the SEC is a special football conference. Hell, I'll even go as far as to say it is the best conference in the country. However, the separation between the SEC and the Pac 10/12 has never been as far as most football fans have been led to believe.
Most of our hype and day-to-day conversation is powered by the media. The PAC games are on late and most out east never see them. Out of sight, out of mind. The very same folks that have been hyping the SEC for 15 years are the guys that had South Carolina rated No. 2 at the beginning of the season.
The problems with rankings is that they are hyperbolic in nature and start way too early, with little information.
KEY POINT HERE>>> We start every season with 5-6 SEC programs ranked in the top 15. After beating up on The Citadel, Louisiana-Lafayette and Florida International for three weeks, they are all 3-0 and now ranked in the top-10. When they finally play one-another, it is considered a good loss because they lost to a top-10 program. IN REALITY, it was the first good team they played and they lost.
In addition, the smaller conferences out west are far more competitive than the Sun Belt, which is the annual punching bag for the SEC. Football is a game of attrition. When the SEC programs are resting their players for two quarters in weeks 1-3, the Pac 12 programs are playing four quarters against Boise State and Michigan State. The injuries add up over time while the SEC teams are still fresh in week eight. Lets also not forget that the SEC has some really bad football programs, historically. Vandy, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Tennessee change coaches about every two years. Ole Miss and Miss State are good this year, but how long has it been? It took A&M and Missouri all but one year to become a major player in the conference. What does that tell you? Neither one of those programs was a major player in the Big 12 for decades. I think Missouri had gone about three decades without a conference title.
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