What is the best conference in college football? That’s a question that really doesn’t need to be answered in 2008 and honestly for the last few years. The SEC has been a dominant force in college football. SEC fans have mixed feelings about it. At the top:
o SEC fans can brag about how good SEC football is, SEC football tradition, etc.
o There’s always a chance you’ll see an SEC team win against another conference in a major BCS bowl game.
o Surviving an SEC football season is like a badge of honor and respect with so many good teams.
But for every up there is always a down, and those include:
o With so many great SEC football teams, they could all eliminate each other from BCS Championship contention.
o SEC teams don’t get bye weeks once conference play begins, where they have chances to rest from injuries or increase scores.
o It’s downright hard to make a college football bet online with an SEC conference game! All of these teams can beat each other in any given week.
That leaves us with a revised question. The question is no longer who is the best conference in college football, the real question is, is the SEC too good for its own good? It’s hard to say, but I think most people would go yes. And that’s for one of the reasons listed above, all of these teams can end up beating each other, leaving no one to go to the BCS Championship game.
The system is clearly flawed. A team from a weak conference, like the Big East or Big Ten, could go undefeated against thin opposition and get more credit than a team from the SEC that loses once and rises to the top of the ultra-competitive conference in which they play. It’s almost impossible right now to get out of the SEC unscathed.
The season may end with four SEC teams in the top ten college football rankings. If those four teams beat one of those four teams, they’ll be looking up at an undefeated team from a weak conference that overtook them in the BCS standings. That’s not very fair.
If you’re a fan of the SEC, you might be disappointed by that. And if you’re a fan of betting on SEC games, then bet smart. Alabama is a team on the rise this year, and they have great potential to be a powerhouse. Georgia isn’t as good as predicted, but it’s still a top-tier team, and Florida and LSU always seem to be in the hunt for a title come November.
But what we’ve seen is that in the SEC, rankings and tradition don’t matter. We’ve seen Ole Miss score a big upset and we’ve seen Alabama crush the preseason number one…on the road! I guess Nick Saban is pretty happy to be back in the college ranks, and I’m the people of Alabama who are pretty eager to pay him all the money they want.
SEC, you may be too good for your own good, but you can’t get any better at looking!
