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College Football's Best Conference, SEC, Big 12, ACC, Big 10, Pac-10, Big East
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NO LAST CALL!
COLLEGE FOOTBALL: PARTY GUIDES: BAR GUIDES: The SEC is the nation's best football conference. Find out who's second best and on down the line.
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College Football's Top Conferences
The great thing about sports is that there can always be arguments – usually over beers in a bar – about who's the best, which team deserves to be recognized, and which player is more capable over another player. In college football, this is extended to the different leagues. People from the Pac-10 look down on the SEC because many teams play the likes of UT-Chattanooga and The Citadel out of league play. Folks from the SEC criticize the Pac-10 (well, USC specifically) because the Pac-10 has USC and, well, none others. The Big 12 points to its prolific offenses and the Big 10 to the fact Ohio State has been to two national title games in recent years. But there can be no argument when it comes to the best conference in college football. Clearly, it has been and it still is the the Southeastern Conference. Here's where the major conferences stack up, from top to bottom (sorry Big East). • #1 SEC. The SEC has produced the last three national champions and had a different school as the #1-ranked team for half of the 2008 season. It enters 2009 with the number one team and because Tim Tebow can will this team to win, Florida will repeat. Make it four in a row for the SEC. But the Gators may not even go undefeated, for they must play another conference – and national – powerhouse in LSU. And that is the key to the SEC's toughness: There are not only quality teams in conference play but on the national stage, as well. Alabama is probably the best team in the nation now afer Week 4. LSU may not be the level of it's championship years, but it did something USC couldn't – win at Washington. What about Auburn? Hard to say right now but the Tigers do make one think: What about Auburn? And South Carolina? Okay, Georgia is flaky but still dangerous and Ole Miss is emotionally fragile. but the SEC is the best conference because of the week-in/week-out competition teams face in league play. Just look at LSU; sure, the Tigers have scheduled Louisana-Lafayette and Louisiana Tech but in successive weeks, they play at Georgia, host Florida, host Auburn, take a break with Tulane, then travel to Alabama. And two weeks later they are at Ole Miss. Here's another thing about the SEC that no other conference can match. Frank Beamer makes $2.1 million at Virginia Tech, which is tied for second-biggest salary in the ACC. That would not even place him in the top half of the SEC. • #2 Big 12. The nation's second-best team in 2009 may well be the Texas Longhorns. But it may be hard to tell with an opening schedule of Louisiana-Monroe and Wyoming and also includes Texas El Paso. Perhaps the Oct. 17 Red River Shootout with Oklahoma will help establish this team's credentials. The Big 12's offenses make it the most exciting conference, but not the best. Remember highly-vaunted Texas Tech getting throttled by Ole Miss 47-34 in the Cotton Bowl? Yes, Oklahoma State did beat Georgia in Stillwater to open the 2009 season, but that was more of a result of the Dawgs sleepwalking rather than the Cowboys dominating. OSU followed that win with this gem: A 45-35 loss to Houston. Then Texas Tech allows a 95-yard drive in the fourth quarter to lose tot he Cougars. Why does Oklahoma get so much love each and every year? It's been handed two appearances in national championship games only to be defeated in each (and blown out in a third) and last year was given the conference title despite losing convincingly to Texas. (The conference should have had a OU-Texas rematch in its title game; playing Missouri from the other division proved to be a waste of time that settled nothing.) And when Sam Bradford went down and the Sooners lost to BYI, it showed an overall weakness i n the team. We'll wait and see on Oklahoma State – which has a nice tradition of getting out to 35-0 leads to Texas and losing – and perhaps Colorado will finally step up and make some noise. Kansas is no longer a joke but is no national title threat and Nebraska is certainly not the embarrassment it was under Bill Callahan but is hardly the Nebraska of Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne. Missouri is well coached and may somewhat rise again, but not this year. • #3 Pac-10. When the season started, I had the Pac-10 as the fifth-best conference. What has changed has not been a sudden emergence of the conference but the failures of the preseason #3 and #4 conferences. Really, other than USC, is there any other team in this conference that poses a national threat? Of course not. Oh, some people will say Cal, but they say that every year and even in the school's best years, it's a 9-3 program. It plays well at home and dismantled middle-of-the-ACC team to start the season, but what will that mean come October? (As proof of this statement see this result: Cal 3, Oregon 42). The Golden Bears could put it together and take out USC, but since Norm Chow left Troy, the Trojans always lose to some vastly inferior team (could it be Washington this year?), not one that is only semi-less inferior (oh yes it was Washington, which followed up that magical moment by losing to Stanford). Oregon? Can't sustain its momentum for an entire season and frankly, the new head coach is better suited as a coordinator. The team looked horrible against Boise State. Oregon State? Pleeeze. Arizona State? HA! UCLA? The Bruins did beat Tennessee in Knoxville and while they should be given credit for playing through bad calls and several mistakes, they had the fortune of picking on what is now one of the worst teams in the SEC. The real weakness of this conference is the number of downright horrible teams: Washington, Washington State, Stanford and Arizona (has a few flashes but overall uninspiring). UCLA could fit in here, too, though it's getting better. That's half the league. • #4 Big 10. At least Ohio State was close this time. Obviously, the Buckeyes were looking past Navy to USC, but the team still can't win on the big stage. It leaves the same question asked every season: How good are the Buckeyes? Whenver they get into the title game we get the answer: Good enough for the Big 10 but not good enough to be consiered an elite team. Penn State? Take a look at that intimidating opening schedule: Akron, Syracuse, Temple, with a later game at Eastern Illinois. And they say there's no preseason in college football! The Nittany Lions were whipped on the offensive line and lost to Iowa. Michigan State? The Spsartans seemed to haave potential, perhaps even poised for a breakout season, but then along comes Central Michigan. Notre Dame. And Wisconsin. Cutting to the chase, with Terrelle Pryor, Ohio State is better but not a national title contender. Penn State may get 10 or even 11 victories, but only because the schedule is so weak. If Michigan State could ever get over it's case of the yips, it could make some noise . Iowa has to be considered "Big 10 dangerous" on any given Saturday (at least in this conference) and Northwestern is certainly not the Northwestern of old. But there's no national championship coming from this conference. • #5 ACC. The preseason #3 conference has stumbled, bumbled but hardly has rumbled. Virginia Tech is a Top 10 team. Miami showed resilience– and porous pass defense – in beating Florida State and got a lot of national love after beating Georgia Tech, but was swamped in the rain in Blacksburg, 31-7. But where's the anticipated depth to this league? Florida State's supposed resurgence is as far away as Tallahassee is so California. Georgia Tech may wind up 9-3 but only because the lack of conference competition. North Carolina? 12-10 over over Connecticut doesn't cut it. Clemson? Dabo Swinney's oddball play calling is enough to kill the confidence of an emotional shaky team. Wake Forest? Not from what has transpired the first two weeks in the season. Of course, the conferene shot itself in the foot on opening day, with Virginia losing to William & Mary and Marland being throttled by Cal. • #6 Mountain West. Two potential good teams, BYU and TCU. And it did produce Utah last year. Other than that, it's a cakewalk for these teams, so it's really hard to tell how good (or average) they are on a national stage. I do give BYU credit for playing both Oklahoma and Florida State out of conference (and for beating OU, even though the Sooners were without Sam Bradford); if teams in this league want national respect, that's the kind of scheduling they need to have year in and year out. • #7 Big East. Stick to basketball, guys. Why is this conference awarded an automatic BCS berth? One of those Boise State or Utah upstarts should come in and take it from the Big East. Respond to this article at bartender@pubclub.com
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Commentary by Kevin Wilkerson, an AP-award winning former sports writer
who now pens prose
for 
