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The Big Ten Is Irrelevant - Again

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lvbuckeye said:
Nebraska beat Georgia in a bowl game THIS YEAR.
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Yeah, but the SEC Homers argument is that Georgia team was without Aaron Murray and with a hobbled Todd Gurley. That's the argument we got last year from some other SEC homerists.


BuckeyeMafia said:
Yeah, that's what I meant. Nebraska has been good this year but I still expect them to finish with at least 3 losses. 9-4 isn't the Nebraska that I know.
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The problem is that 9-4 IS the Nebraska that we have unfortunately known under Bo. This is the Huskers' best start since 2011, but we're not out of October yet. That's statistically Bo's worst month as a coach for wins/losses.

Not to mention - if this team doesn't win a B1G championship this year, we'll be sorely disappointed. Second verse, same as the first. Bo's coached in three conference championship games, but he hasn't had the combination of offense/defense he's had this year.
 
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matcar said:
The conference played a solid OOC schedule and dominated it. They earned the right and if MSU beats those teams they, too, earned that right. You say it's an advantage to play against the SEC if they win because it vaults them up. But it's the if they win bit that's hard. MSU has won this far and hence deserve what they have.
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I saw Auburn-Kansas State and LSU-Wisconsin. Congrats to the SEC for getting the Ws but "dominated" doesn't come close to describing those games. A dropped pass in the end zone saved Auburn and Wiscy having no QB in the second half allowed LSU to come from behind. Missouri looked great losing at home against Indiana while Tennesse got crushed at Oklahoma. Ole Miss beat Boise - is anyone saying the Truck Drivers are great any more? The most impressive win was Georgia over Clemson and that was a 3 point game after 3 quarters.

I already acknowledged the SEC as the best conference. But saying they "played a solid OOC schedule and dominated it" sounds like something one would hear out of Chris Fowler than an actual assessment of their results.
 
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Jake said:
I saw Auburn-Kansas State and LSU-Wisconsin. Congrats to the SEC for getting the Ws but "dominated" doesn't come close to describing those games. A dropped pass in the end zone saved Auburn and Wiscy having no QB in the second half allowed LSU to come from behind. Missouri looked great losing at home against Indiana while Tennesse got crushed at Oklahoma. Ole Miss beat Boise - is anyone saying the Truck Drivers are great any more? The most impressive win was Georgia over Clemson and that was a 3 point game after 3 quarters.

I already acknowledged the SEC as the best conference. But saying they "played a solid OOC schedule and dominated it" sounds like something one would hear out of Chris Fowler than an actual assessment of their results.
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Look at their OOC record. That's what I meant by dominating. Their overall record, including the games against Power 5 conference teams was dominating.
 
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I love the SEC hate i get here.
mainly because I hate most of those bastards too.

but I'm gonna go ahead and defend them anyway.

the big difference I see between the SEC and everyone else in depth and variety.
and no I don't mean that Vandy would win the B1G, or that Oregon would lose 4 games in the SEC.

in any given season, the B1G, The Big XII, Pac12, and ACC has 1-2 teams with a legitimate shot at winning the conference and competing for a National title. and then 1-3 teams behind them that aren't gonna win anything, but can knock them off their pedestal if they ain't ready.
and typically, it's the same teams from those conferences every single year.

the SEC typically has 2-4 teams with a legit shot at winning the conference and competing for a national title. and then another 3-4 teams behind them that won't win shit can spoil their seasons quick like.
and lately, those aren't necessarily the same teams every year.
some years it's been USCe with a shot. Not long ago it was Arkansas, this year it's the Missishitty schools. Auburn went from top to bottom to top.
Yeah Bama is always there, and we've been consistently in the mix. But the rest of the contenders seems to shuffle a lot more than it does in other conferences.

how does the conference as a whole do it? I don't know.
but it always seems like when one team falls off the map, somebody else jumps to the top of the heap.

right now, Michigan is down. Penn St. is down, Nebraska is not what they once were.
but none of the rest of the B1G stepped in to fill that void. yeah Mich St is up there, but they've kinda always seemed on the cusp.

whereas in the SEC, Florida is liquid dogshit, USCe ain't real pretty either.
but Miss St has stepped up to be a contender. Ole Piss is playing the bridesmaid role that USCe typically hogs.


right now, I think the SEC has 4-6 teams that would have a fighting chance to win if they got into the final 4.
that's no to say they deserve that many spots, just that I think that many teams would absolutely be competitive.

i don't know that any other conference goes quite that deep.
the ACC has 2-3 (FSU, Clemson, Louisville)
B1G has 2-4 (OSU, Mich St., Nebraska, Wiscy)
Big XII has 3 maybe 4 (K-State, WVU, Baylor, TCU)
Pac 12 has at most 4 (Oregon, Zona, Zona St., Utah)
SEC (State, Bama, Auburn, Georgia, Ole Miss, LSU)


y
 
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Jake said:
I saw Auburn-Kansas State and LSU-Wisconsin. Congrats to the SEC for getting the Ws but "dominated" doesn't come close to describing those games. A dropped pass in the end zone saved Auburn and Wiscy having no QB in the second half allowed LSU to come from behind. Missouri looked great losing at home against Indiana while Tennesse got crushed at Oklahoma. Ole Miss beat Boise - is anyone saying the Truck Drivers are great any more? The most impressive win was Georgia over Clemson and that was a 3 point game after 3 quarters.

I already acknowledged the SEC as the best conference. But saying they "played a solid OOC schedule and dominated it" sounds like something one would hear out of Chris Fowler than an actual assessment of their results.
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All very good points but "Truck Drivers" just makes my night having lived in Boise for a bit :lol: And to add to your point, the score looked much worse in that game than it was...Donk State gave them all they could handle sans the last 10 minutes...the same team that lost resoundingly to Air Force. And frankly I am not entirely impressed with KSU either. This season there are no dominant teams, just a cluster of good ones.

But I agree on the SEC overall this season...they have been dominant in years past and deserved all the credit. But I think this year, albeit they are still the best conference around, the gap just is not that far at the top margins. But I will concede to @Nutriaitch in terms of depth overall.
 
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Nutriaitch said:
the big difference I see between the SEC and everyone else in depth and variety.
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I think that's pretty much it, although I'd state it a little differently, in terms of tradition and basic program fundamentals, rather than the strength of teams right now. To me, it's about the number of elite programs in the conference. The SEC simply has more of them than the BigTen does, and that is unlikely to change.

The elite programs, by my definition, are not necessarily the ones that are really good right now. They're the ones that have the two basic fundamentals in place that are generally required to be consistently good.

1) Name brand (this is an amalgam of winning tradition/fan support/media interest)
2) Geographic proximity to great high school football talent

I would say the SEC has about 6 programs that are elite by this measure (say, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Auburn), and maybe a couple more that could conceivably get there with some brand development. The BigTen has 3, maybe 4 (OSU, Michigan, PSU, maybe Nebraska) and maybe one or two more that could conceivably get there with some brand development.

Basically, the SEC has more programs that are realistically capable of competing for a national title on a regular basis, and that's a disparity that isn't likely to change. The perception of the disparity has certainly been increased (somewhat unreasonably, in my opinion) by the fact that 2 of the BigTen's 3 indisputably elite programs have been down for the better part of a decade. But one indication of the SEC's greater overall strength is that they can absorb a downturn in a couple of their elite programs (like UT, recently) without it turning the conference into a one trick pony.

That said, I think the BigTen can, should, and probably will be in the near future consistently among the strongest of the non-SEC conferences, according to the same analysis.
 
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Buckeye513 said:
Conferences don't win championships.
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Of course not, but that goes to one of the central questions in this thread. Is conference strength (or relevance) determined primarily by the conference affiliation of the team that happens to win the championship? Or is it determined by which conference is consistently putting the most teams in the top-ten or top-twenty-five?

Personally, I would give greater emphasis to the latter definition.
 
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