I am a college football nut. A Bucknut to be exact. I worship my Buckeyes, no matter how overrated or slow they are. But if we can all agree the Big 10 has not been up to par the last few years, can we also all agree on the other truth in the room no one seems to be mentioning…wait for it…The Big 12 is completely overrated. (I just heard one of my Big 12 colleagues slam his Death Cab filled iPod to the floor in disgust). So I am watching College Football Live this week and the pretty boy ESPN mediocre ex-college football QB club is debating who is the best conference in the country between the Big 12 and the SEC. I know it’s the off-season and you need to fill airtime, but what is there to debate? Did the pretty boys watch the BCS title game? It was vintage Chokelahoma – score a gazillion points against the ghost d’s of the Big 12, then when the big bad Sooners play the team from the best conference in the country, they squeak out 14. And let’s not forget the whoopin’ the Ole Miss Rebels put on the “High Powered” Texas Tech Red Raiders in the Cotton Bowl. And then you have Texas, the team we all know should have been playing Florida since they beat Chokelahoma by 10, and Mizzou, the Big 12 runner-up, needing big plays late to barely beat the overrated slow pokes in the Big 10 who are supposedly no match for the unstoppable, imaginative offenses of the Plains. Hell, the Big 12 South, who the media fawned over last year like computer geeks do over the prom queen, came 16 seconds from going 0-4 in bowl games. Listen, I live in the heart of Tebowica and hate the SEC as much as anyone, but to try and argue they are not the best conference in the country right now and over the last 5-10 years in CFB is laughable. The SEC has 3 BCS titles in a row and the chosen one leading the campaign for a 4th. The pretty boy club can fawn over the Crimson and Burnt Orange “juggernauts’ again all season, but we all know what the results will be come late December or early January – another mildly offensive overrated choke job. Until next time…
No mention of the SEC’s 2nd best team being dominated by Utah? Anyway, I agree with you that the SEC is probably the best conference, but it’s really not that big of a difference as you’d like to think.
Florida was good last year, but Alabama and Georgia were clearly overrated last year and the next best team was Ole Miss (who is coached by Houston Nutt… and well, can’t be viewed as a serious long term or consistent threat). I think last year the SEC and the Big 12 were both slightly overrated and the PAC-10 slightly underrated, and the MWC vastly underrated. The rest performed as expected.
If I had to rank the conferences, it’d probably go:
1. SEC
2. Big 12
3. Pac 10
4. Mountain West
5. Big East
6. ACC
7. Conference USA
8. WAC
9. Big 10
10. MAC
But honestly, I think it’s a tough call between Conference USA, WAC, and the Big 10, but in the end, C-USA gets the nod from me.
Come on now – you aren’t giving the MAC any credit…
Well, the MAC just didn’t have any depth last year but weren’t very top heavy either. I agree, Ball St. does deserve some credit, but they fizzled towards the end of the season. If we go team by team Big 10 vs MAC, I’d have to take the Big 10 hands down. Ball St. vs tOSU, I’d *probably* got with tOSU. Although I subscribe to the notion of picking the team with the better QB, and as much as I like Nate Davis, I don’t think he’d be enough to carry Ball St. over the Buckeyes. After that, Buffalo probably wouldn’t be competitive with PSU. And Troy wasn’t its usual pesky, upstart self, although I’d probably pick them to upset one of the following three: MSU, Iowa, or Northwestern. But like I said. Just not much depth there last year, and that’s why the Big 10 gets the nod over MAC.