Well there you have it. Stop everything right here after two weeks. No need to go any further. The pac(1)0 is the best!

Hope Mandel is ready for a lot of angry emails from ESS-EEE-SEE SPEED country.

Both last year and early this season, I’ve observed that when it comes to public perception, individual teams get credit for big wins, but conferences take the rap for bad losses.

When Alabama beat Virginia Tech on opening weekend, the general reaction was that the Tide look like they’ll be a BCS contender again; however, the Hokies’ loss, coupled with Virginia losing to William and Mary, Duke losing to Richmond and Wake losing to Baylor meant the ACC must stink. When Oklahoma State beat Georgia, the Cowboys were hailed as “legit;” when they lost to Houston — on the same weekend Kansas State lost to Louisiana-Lafayette and Colorado lost to Toledo — the Big 12 suddenly became “overrated.”

This is precisely what happened to the Pac-10 last year. On the same weekend USC got feted for thrashing Ohio State, Arizona lost to New Mexico, Arizona State lost to UNLV, Cal lost to Maryland, Stanford lost to TCU, UCLA lost 59-0 to BYU and Washington lost 55-14 to Oklahoma. Any credibility the conference might have hoped for effectively evaporated that weekend, and the Trojans’ impressive win was essentially forgotten as soon as they lost to Oregon State (which itself had already gotten blitzed by Penn State).

Looking at the first two weeks of this season, however, I would contend no conference has performed better than the Pac-10. The league boasts the best record (6-2) so far against the five other BCS leagues and the Mountain West and has largely avoided bad losses (with the exception of Oregon’s poor showing at Boise State). If the league can pull off a couple more wins this weekend — like Oregon State against Cincinnati or Arizona (which previously shut down Central Michigan) at Iowa — it’s going to be pretty tough for anyone from the SEC, Big 12 or elsewhere to argue with that record.

But of course, should Pac-10 teams lose more games than they win, or should UCLA (against Kansas State) or Stanford (against San Jose State), suffer a bad loss, it’s easy to predict the reaction. The Pac-10 stinks. USC doesn’t play anyone. Which is why, at the end of the day, the one surefire way for a conference to preserve its reputation is to schedule Troy and Charleston Southern.

How come the SEC has been so successful in bowl games….Oh, I know because they’re all played in the south. Miles traveled is directly proportional to the quality of team played. Man, you people are really reaching arent’ you?

Cream Puffs??? Are you talking about those pac(1)0 standbys like Cal State Sacramento, Portland State, Cal Davis and, Montana? That’s not to mention those in-conference cream puffs. Oh yeah, at least the SEC beats their cream puffs.

Georgia plays a very tough OOC schedule. We lost to OSU but, last year beat Arizona State. I guess that our mistake was scheduling a BCS team outside the pac(1)0.

You can always tell when you’re the best. All the bottom feeders are eat up with jealousy.

This is how the SEC gets 5 teams in the top 25. They beat up on cream puffs, 78-0, pad their stats and get the writers up into a lather. So after their easy OOC schedules, they get a high ranking going into conference play. Then the SEC is the “toughest conference” because all these over-ranked teams play each other. But are they really that good?

God knows these SEC teams rarely play anyone tough out of conference, and when they do, they lose. UCLA, Cal and USC are a combined 7-1 against SEC teams in the past 6 years.

And that includes your Tigers, AuMan, who got taken behind the woodshed by USC at Jordan Hare. Perhaps it’s that beating that convince voters that Auburn wouldn’t be able to hang with USC in the 2005 title game. Or perhaps the reason is that in 2004 Auburn played a bunch of pansy azz OOC schools like the ones Florida is playing this year.

And don’t even get me started about home games. Bama played Clemson last year and VaTech this year – both at home, weren’t they? That’s because SEC teams are too chicken sh*t to play OOC road games against BCS foes. Georgia’s trip to Stillwater this year was only the second non-conference road game since 1970 that occurred more than 80 miles from its campus. That’s not a typo. LOL That’s embarrassing. Oh, and the Dawgs lost. Looks like they won’t play another OOC road game until 2050.

Quick: which conference has the best BCS bowl record since the inception of the BCS? Answer? The Pac-10.