Here is a good read for you PQ.....
The SEC is Overrated
Monday, July 27, 2009, 03:54 PM EST [General]
I've ranted on this topic for some time now.
The "SEC fans" who root for a Conference, which does not play ANY games (only teams do, as I have to continually point out to the Southerners), are among the most vociferous * rooters in the country.
They even have a Conference Yell, believe it or not. "SEC! SEC! SEC!" can be heard in a cacophonous din behind Lee Corso on many Game Day shows. Now, what the hell does rooting for a Conference actually mean? It would be like someone at the Olympic Games yelling, "North America! North America! North America!", or "Western Hemisphere! etc."
The SEC fans all understand what it means: "I am rooting for 12 teams, 10% of the Div I NCAA teams all at once. My set of teams is superior to ANY other set of teams in the country, even though the two sets will never play each other.
Now, if my favorite individual team (if any, as I may or may not have one, just as I may or may not actually have attended any college, SEC or otherwise) plays another SEC team, I still root for both of them. If I support, say, LSU, and LSU plays Alabama, I will root for LSU, but still support Alabama."
Got that?
Since the SEC has a set of teams which are often on paper roughly comparable in talent, the SEC Fan claims that this proves that the SEC is the "toughest Conference," despite being unable to say or prove exactly what being the "toughest Conference" means, when Conferences do not play each other, and National Title trophies do not have Conference membership on them.
The SEC Fan is unwilling to admit that the same result would occur if all the SEC teams were of lower, or average quality, as if it were of higher quality.
Still with me?
The SEC gets favorable treatment from the media in:
- The SEC usually has 4-5 or even more teams in the preseason TOP 25, which influences the BCS rating initally, AND later due to Strength of Schedule (SOS) illogical comparisons. Illogical because the BEST Team in the country could easily be from the "weakest" Conference, no matter what "weakest" means. (see above.) Worse, SOS does not mean ANYTHING as it begs its own issue.
- These preseason placements are not done by high powered, competent, analysts, but by media personalities and sportswriters mostly living either on the East Coast or in the same time zone as the SEC teams.
- The SEC has some media personalities totally browbeaten by their adamant insistence of "SEC Superiority" without any objective proof, including Kirk Herbstreit, even though he went to Ohio State. To question this superiority invokes all kinds of SEC viewer backlash, as if this were an unquestioned fact, and how dare it be challenged, etc.
- A viewer is often barraged with such terms as "an SEC defense", implying that this is an actual defensive scheme or populated by superior athletes, all without any proof whatsoever. Further, many of the most innovative football schema have come out of the Pac 10, such as "The West Coast Offense", which actually IS an offensive strategic technology.
- Media visiting the West Coast late in the past several years are all surprised to find that USC is quite obviously superior to even the best SEC teams. These broadcasters often express doubt about the Trojans at the start of the broadcast, and at the end are fully convinced to the contrary.
This is because they come in biased towards SEC teams, having not considered others objectively.
- The East Coast media almost never see Pac 10 games live in prime time due to the time zone differences and the West Coast games early in the season being played normally at night to avoid the heat issues in September.
- The media are often stunned at the number of NFL draft choices coming out of the Pac 10 in general, and USC in particular, for all the above reasons.
USC alone has had 21 NFL draft choices in the past two years, amounting to an entire USC team being drafted as an NFL "team." Yet, neither year has USC been voted into the BCS Title game, despite having the same record as at least one of the teams chosen. (see above pre-season polls and media bias)
All in all, and as a result of the above, the BCS system is a tilted playing field, in favor of the SEC teams, and these comments do not exhaust the many other pertinent issues, such as conference championship preference due to extra games, cupcake team scheduling by many SEC schools, etc.
CONCLUSIONS: The SEC is highly overrated and the BCS Title Team choice is influenced and distorted due to this farcial deference.
FIX: A Playoff system, such as used in Div. II and virtually every other NCAA sport.
If the SEC really were "Superior", they would welcome a Playoff System. But, they don't, and it is not hard to figure out why.
* Meaning as used here, loud, vocal, boisterous, often drunken and boorish behavior.
http://community.foxsports.com/alexr...c_is_overrated