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It's Difficult To Argue With The SEC's Success

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By MICK ELLIOTT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 31, 2008

GAINESVILLE - Let's set the record straight. There is good college football played across the country. Some areas, however, simply show a track record for doing it better and with greater consistency than others.

All of which brings us to the Southeastern Conference.

While arguing respective league strengths is a college football tradition as old as the conferences themselves, and often contested as heatedly as any game, occasionally there comes a time when it is best to simply shut up and listen to facts.

Quiet, please.

•With national championships by LSU in 2007 and Florida in 2006, the SEC is the first conference to win consecutive BCS titles.

•LSU and Georgia finished 1-2 in last year's AP poll, the first time a conference doubled up on top since the Big Eight did it in 1971.

•Five league teams were ranked in the top 15 of last year's final AP poll.

•The SEC is 11-4 all time in BCS bowl games, and last year's seven postseason victories are the most by a conference in NCAA history.

•Six SEC players were drafted in the first round of this season's NFL draft, and 263 were on 2007 NFL opening-day active rosters, the most of any conference.

•Five league coaches - Florida's Urban Meyer, South Carolina's Steve Spurrier, LSU's Les Miles, Tennessee's Phil Fulmer and Alabama's Nick Saban - have coached national championship teams. Two, Arkansas' Bobby Petrino and Alabama's Saban, left the NFL on their own accord to take jobs in the league.

"Well, I came back from the SEC meeting," Meyer said. "I looked around that room and counted right off the top of my head nine programs that think they're going to win the conference championship.

"Coaches are obviously paid in this conference. Stadiums are filled in this conference. It's not an opportunity to go blast other conferences. However, it is an opportunity to tell you the respect we have in this conference. Any given nine think they're going to play in the conference championship. I don't know you see that anywhere else in America."

There are a lot of things only seen in the SEC - not the least of them being grown men wearing a plastic hog head or carrying rolls of toilet paper and laundry detergent.

Last season was the 27th consecutive season the SEC recorded the largest total attendance figures of any conference in the nation.

Averaging 75,139 per game, the league's 6.68-plus million well outdistanced its closest competitor, the Big Ten with 71,158 per game and 5.4 million total. The Big 12 was third in fan support, averaging 60,419, and the Pac-10 followed with 57,910.

On the playing field, it's the Pac-10 that seems best equipped to argue SEC dominance.

The West Coasters have the 2003 AP and 2004 BCS national champions and a contender this year in Southern Cal, plus the league boasts a healthy nonconference schedule that includes games against Penn State, Georgia, Hawaii, BYU, Tennessee, Ohio State and Oklahoma.

"This conference is one of the best in the country," Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh said during the Pac-10's recent media gathering.

"This is world-class football at the highest level. It's a points-generated conference. Whoever wins this conference are strong men. It's very physical."

All the same, only twice since 2000 has the Pac-10 finished with as many as four teams in the Top 25 of the coaches' poll. By comparison, the SEC has a high of six in 2000 and an ongoing streak of five consecutive years with five schools ranked at season's end.

The Big 12, meanwhile, placed four teams - led by Missouri at No. 5 - in last season's Top 10 and five in the Top 25, but one year earlier put only two in the final poll. Also, despite national championships by Oklahoma (2000) and Texas (2005), the Big 12's 31-31 bowl record since 2000 demands a demerit.

And then there is the Big Ten, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, who have been thrashed in consecutive years in the national championship game by SEC teams.

The Big Ten is 22-32 in the postseason since 2000, and two of those losses were ugly while the whole college football world watched.

"I think that when you look at any particular season, there's a natural interest in finding out who is the best team, and last year we found out that LSU and New Orleans defeated Ohio State in a very clear and decisive way," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said. "And the year before, Ohio State was defeated by Florida. So while I recognize those outcomes, I'm really pleased we can play the very best.

"We want to play the big games on the big stage, and sometimes you just get whipped, and we did."

Coach after coach at the SEC media days spoke about the top-to-bottom strength of the league. And each and every one suggested this season could very well be the strongest in SEC history.

"It is a league of great talent," said Kentucky coach Rich Brooks, whose Wildcats beat LSU in overtime. "We were one of the teams that everybody used to think they could put an automatic W up next to as they went into the season. It's not that way any more.

"It's a meat grinder every week."

That's a fact.

Reporter Mick Elliott can be reached at (813) 281-2534 or melliott@tampatrib.com.

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