We are going to hear this entire off season how awesome the SEC is….If I was an Alabama fan or a Florida fan, I would not like that sentiment because it diminishes these schools individual accomplishments.
I say that Urban Myer and Nick Saban have dominated for the last 7 years and not the entire SEC…....
Les (Lesticles) Miles won the BCS title with Saban’s players and Cam Newton won it it at Aw-barn so I’ll give a slight nod there….
I voted for No, but I think the answer lies somewhere in between. Alabama is clearly the best program in CFB. Saban is the best coach. Give that guy that much time to prepare and it’s pretty much a lock. The best talent in the country is in the SEC footprint so the conference is going to benefit from that.
I also think that there’s a lot of talent all over the country and there are teams that can compete with and beat any SEC team on any given day. The bowls showed that. aTm also showed that. Remember before the season when all the SEC folks and talking heads said that the new teams were going to struggle mightily? Hell, even Phil Steele, who I think is really good, picked aTm to finish 6th in the West.
What bugs me is the infamous transitive property argument gets used to build up the SEC rep and poll rankings (Bama is better than every other team -> random SEC team played Bama close -> random SEC team must be better than every other non-SEC team) , but that argument gets shot down (and rightly so) when it’s used against them (South Carolina beat Georgia -> Georgia beat Florida -> Florida beat aTm -> LSU beat aTm -> aTm beat Bama -> All these teams are equally great -> Florida gets abused by Louisville -> Florida didn’t want to be there.)
Like I said before, the SEC is not overrated so much as over-venerated.
Alabama, A&M and Georgia can say whatever the hell they want to say this offseason and there would be no response given how their seasons went. Florida, LSU and Auburn can of course talk about the 7 straight titles since they’re part of it. But SC, Arkansas, Vandy, etc. can’t just ride the others’ coattails just because they’re in the SEC too.
Slappy has it about right. There are reasons the SEC is overall the best conference but clearly they have numerous teams that are marginal to poor, just like most conferences.
The top teams are better than most and that is what separates them. If FSU & Miami (not to mention Clemson, VT, etc) were like they were in years past, it is a different conversation.
I enjoy the SEC games and like their rivalries and commitment to providing great venues to watch games. But, they are not light years ahead of everyone like they claim; better - yes but too many SEC homers think no one else even plays the game.
Saban would win BIG anywhere and Bama just makes it too easy for him to win.
When I was doing the computer rankings, a couple trends I noticed about the SEC were these:
* Their out-of-conference games are against teams that are the cream of the crap. Not bottom of the barrel, not “great”, but teams that are bad enough to guarantee a win but good enough that it will not completely tank their strength of schedule. This is actually very smart scheduling going on with the SEC teams.
* The SEC coaches voted SEC teams higher than the average, on average, than coaches of other conferences voted their own teams compared to the average. This leads to a self-fulfilling sort of system where because coaches are voting their conference’s teams higher, on average, it increases strength of schedule and national perception in a compounding fashion.
All smart stuff, but I think the perception is a little out of balance with the reality on the whole due to some of this behind-the-scenes stuff that people typically don’t see. Is Alabama the best team in the country—absolutely (and congrats!).
Considering Saban won 3 of those 7, I’d say the “SEC, SEC, SEC, ...” is/was dominated by Saban, sCam, and Tebow. Who else should be included during that run?
I’d say the SEC has a lot of built in advantages that if other conferences like the ACC for example had, it would level the playing field, but some of those advantages involve ethics and an unwillingness by the NCAA to go after the rampant cheating in the SEC.
We know that Cecil Newton was shopping his son to Mississippi State and then Auburn lands Cam, the NCAA performed a mock investigation and found nothing? BS
In the case of the ACC, I think several universities are on the brink of turning that corner where they can go on a dynasty or mini-dynasty run: FSU, Clemson, Louisville, Miami, UNC, Pitt and if VT and GT can get their crap together, they can too.
Given the answer choices, I had to vote yes. Anybody who doesn’t think that the SEC has been the “gold standard” of college football over the past decade simply doesn’t watch the sport.
Given the answer choices, I had to vote yes. Anybody who doesn’t think that the SEC has been the “gold standard” of college football over the past decade simply doesn’t watch the sport.
because when i think dominant football over the past decade i think of kentucky, vandy, tennesse, auburn, and even south carolina was a joke before about 2007
Everybody is chasing the SEC… That’s what all conferences strive to be… The thing that has propelled them to being the best is the fertile recruiting grounds.
If you think another conference is the gold standard then you’re in denial.
Sure, there’s a few teams that ride coattails, but the ones that have won the Ship are all the evidence one needs to prove the college football pecking order.
I’ll still call out those fans who think that because their team plays in the SEC it automatically makes them a better program than top tier programs in other conferences… (*cough* Georgia *cough*)
Georgia is the only school in their state that’s worth anything… They get the pick of the litter for recruits in the state… played the easiest schedule ever played in the SEC… They should be in the national championship every year (especially this year)... But they always manage to screw it up… They play tough, but they got nothing to show for it.
We’ll see how the do next year when they start Clemson, S. Carolina, and LSU.
They get more from the SEC than the SEC gets from them.
I just don’t understand how they can avoid punishment like OSU
- You have JerseyGate (I thought the evidence was quite damning… but what has it resulted in? It wasn’t that big of an infraction—- but if you lay the hammer on OSU for what they did… then Bama should get something similar, right?)
- You have Cam Newton (Again, I thought it was pretty clear what was going on….)
Who knows. My guess is that they can’t drop the hammer on them now. That would have been like owning Lance Armstrong right after he battled back from cancer and won all of his titles. After he has been retired for a few years… different story. Observe what happened to New England after they were caught video taping other team’s signal callers… They were the dynasty in the NFL… to drop such a punishment on the champions would make the NFL look like a farce, right?
Given the answer choices, I had to vote yes. Anybody who doesn’t think that the SEC has been the “gold standard” of college football over the past decade simply doesn’t watch the sport.
because when i think dominant football over the past decade i think of kentucky, vandy, tennesse, auburn, and even south carolina was a joke before about 2007
In your opinion, which conference has been better than the SEC over the past decade?
Given the answer choices, I had to vote yes. Anybody who doesn’t think that the SEC has been the “gold standard” of college football over the past decade simply doesn’t watch the sport.
because when i think dominant football over the past decade i think of kentucky, vandy, tennesse, auburn, and even south carolina was a joke before about 2007
In your opinion, which conference has been better than the SEC over the past decade?
The Nick Saban/Urban Meyer Conference is what has dominated College Football and not so much the rest of the SEC….
When I have some time I’ll dig into stats and discuss top to bottow performance of the SEC….
Given the answer choices, I had to vote yes. Anybody who doesn’t think that the SEC has been the “gold standard” of college football over the past decade simply doesn’t watch the sport.
because when i think dominant football over the past decade i think of kentucky, vandy, tennesse, auburn, and even south carolina was a joke before about 2007
In your opinion, which conference has been better than the SEC over the past decade?
The Nick Saban/Urban Meyer Conference is what has dominated College Football and not so much the rest of the SEC….
When I have some time I’ll dig into stats and discuss top to bottow performance of the SEC….
Yes, we’d love to see the pointless stats you can dig up. Way to totally avoid the question. I seem to remember some good LSU teams, a couple of undefeated Auburn teams, and some good UGA and USC teams as well. I guess if one team wins 3 championships then everybody else in the league must suck. The SEC could win 10 more championships and the Clemson fans would still be on here talking about how Ole Miss and UK suck. lol. This group of Clemson fans on this forum are the biggest haters I’ve ever seen.
