Oxycontin online. Oxycontin….

But you are surely taking the piss if you are still going to hold to the notion that the Pac 10 was the best conference in the nation this season. It was tentative enough as was at the end of the regular season, but after the bowls the Pac’s record against BCS teams for the season fell to 9-10, and, even worse, only three of those wins were against BCS teams with winning records. I mean, let’s face it, the only real quality win the conference had was USC against Ohio State–who came back and beat conference champ Oregon in the Rose Bowl. After that, the only win Pac 10 had to get excited about at all was UCLA’s win over Tennessee–which was nice, of course, but it was just one 7-6 team beating another. If that’s your conference’s second best scalp your season was shit.

And those wins were offset by some bad losses. Stanford v. Wake was the poster child, but Arizona v. Nebraska and BYU v. Oregon St–both non-competitive blowouts where the Pac 10 team was favored going in–were the killers. Certainly, those two games should have shown you that the supposed depth near the top of the Pac 10 was a bit soft.

Now, then, beyond that, if you don’t want to proclaim the SEC the best conference in the land, that’s your right, certainly. But whether you like it or not, the SEC has had a tremendous run of success the last 4 seasons–one that, quite frankly, seems to have lasted a little too long, given the typically cyclical nature of CFB, so much so that I think it is almost certainly coming to an end, as indicated by the SEC’s mediocre bowl performance this season (which, of course, still wasn’t all that bad).

Over the last 4 seasons, the SEC has gone 53-35 (.602) against other BCS teams, and managed to amass a 25-11 (.694) record in bowls–despite sending two teams to the BCS each year, disadvantaging their bowl matchups farther down the line. And, furthermore, they’ve gone 7-1 in those BCS games, and had the national champ each of those four seasons–with 3 different teams. Outside of the Big East (ironically), no other BCS conference has even come close to matching this level of accomplishment (and, of course, the Big East hasn’t had a serious national title contender during the last four seasons, outside of 2009′s Cincy…who were not competitive in their bowl against the 2nd best SEC team this season).

Look, the SEC had the national champion, arguably had the two best teams in the nation this season, and went 15-8 against other BCS teams (as for the other BCS conferences, the Big East went 11-9; Pac 10 9-10; ACC 12-15; Big 12 8-10; Big 10 9-12). The schedule wasn’t soft, either–there were 15 out-of-conference wins by BCS teams against BCS teams with 9 or more wins, and the SEC had 7 of them.

Not acknowledging that the SEC was the best conference in college football this season–or claiming that the Pac 10 was–doesn’t make for hard-hitting analysis; it just suggests you are unable to assess the evidence.

I don’t post the Sagarin rankings to ‘prove’ anything other than the FACT that ANY KIND OF EVIDENCE to the contrary that the SEC is the best conference at any point in the season is ALWAYS ignored. My gripe has nothing to do with the reality of the situation–determining the best conference depends on what you look for in a league and is subjective–but rather the media perception out there that automatically makes the SEC the best while never taking any contrary data into account. The fact that a little ol’ blogger thought the Pac-10 was the best conference this year and you think I need to re-establish my integrity by admitting I was wrong just shows the intolerance of fans out there who refuse to allow any diversity of opinion in the conference debate.

BTW, I was so biased, I had the SEC first in my preseason conference rankings:

http://heismanpundit.com/2009/07/07/top-conferences-for-2009/

Maybe I should apologize for THAT ranking. Anyway, you want me to go with the rest of the crowd and annoint the SEC as the best without any question. Sorry, you won’t see that happen here. I will call it as I see it. And I will continue to dog closed-minded college football fans like yourself who refuse to consider the possibility that SEC football isn’t always the best in the country. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. Deal with it.

“This was not an easy decision… something that happened very quick. The support at USC has been great and we have so many people to thank for making us feel welcome. I know I can say this… I’ve been here for 4 days and there’s not one day that I didn’t give everything I had to the USC football program. I know we’re leaving USC with a better program than it was 4 days ago.”

Still curious why you don’t write about conference strength using things like Sagarin at the end of the season when you referenced them a lot through out the year. Is there any other answer other than you’re unwilling to admit you were wrong about the PAC 10?