SEC Football. Overrated?

Living here in Pac 10 country, we always hear on tv and radio about the strength of SEC football and the conference being better than all the others. Well my buddy Brendan took it to heart and started looking at some interesting information and put this together. Pretty compelling stuff.

Is SEC football a fraud? Just a media-hyped monster? You decide ...

· The SEC's non-conference record (as of 11/23) is a superb 39-6 ... wow! That's pretty impressive. OK, let's dig a little deeper.

· The combined record of their non-conference opponents is 223-268, a winning percentage of 45%.

· The combined winning percentage of their opponents in their 39 wins ... 41%.

· The combined winning percentage of their opponents in their 6 losses ... 74%

· Of those 45 games, only 11 have been against schools from BCS conferences (24%).

· The record of those eleven teams is 71-48 (60%).

· The SEC's record in those games is 7-4 (64%). Their seven wins come over teams (Virginia Tech, Washington, Texas A&M, W. Virginia, ASU, Louisville and NC State) with a combined record of 36-39, their four losses to teams (Georgia Tech twice, UCLA and Oklahoma State) with a combined record of 35-9.

· Of their 45 non-conference foes, four are ranked in the Top 25 in the current BCS standings (Georgia Tech @ 7; Oklahoma St. @ 12; V. Tech @ 14 and Houston @ 23). The SEC went 1-3 in those games.

For comparisons sake, we'll look at the Pac-10:

· The Pac-10's non-conference record is a 20-9 ... just okay.

· However, the combined record of their non-conference opponents is 170-151, a winning percentage of 53%.

· The combined winning percentage of their opponents in their 20 wins ... 48%.

· The combined winning percentage of their opponents in their 9 losses ...62%.

· Of those 29 games, 14 were against schools from BCS conferences (48%).

· The record of those fourteen teams is 91-67 (58%).

· The Pac-10's record in those games is 7-7. Their seven wins come against teams with a combined record of 41-40, their seven losses to teams with a combined record of 50-27.

· Of their 29 non-conference, six are ranked in the Top 25 in the current BCS standings (Cincinnati @ 5; Boise St. @ 6; Ohio St. @ 10; Iowa @ 11; LSU @ 15 and Utah @ 21). The Pac-10 went 2-4 in those games.

Head-to-head, the SEC is 2-1 vs. the Pac-10 (LSU over Washington, 31-23; Georgia over ASU, 20-17; UCLA over Tennessee, 19-15). SEC conference records of those three teams is 11-11 and the Pac-10 conference records are 7-16.

My conclusion ... fraud! They might have the most rabid fans, but their conference is no better than the Pac-10 and maybe not better than many of the other conferences. They pad their win columns by beating up on nobody's. This doesn't hurt their overall BCS status because the voters give them so much credit for the in-conference games, which is a joke. Anytime they step out of conference against a ranked team (or even a decent team), they have a good chance of losing.

I think that the FBS should require BCS conference schools, which get all these bs automatic bids, to play at least 50% of their non-conference games vs. other BCS conference schools. The way the system is set up things can be manipulated by playing crummy out of conference games. This way, I see win/loss records shaking out more equitably and conference strength being more transparent. If that were the case, you could pretty much add a loss to most teams within a BCS conference and maybe two on many teams. That would be much fairer to the conferences that don't get an automatic BCS bid. Otherwise, do away with the automatic bids.

· The top three, not surprisingly undefeated teams in the country, Florida, Alabama and Texas, are a combined 11-0 against non-conference opponents. Only one of those games has been against a BCS "AQ" conference team (Alabama vs. Virginia Tech). Florida's final game is against Florida St., so two of twelve (17%) will ultimately be against BCS "AQ" teams.

· Of the other three undefeated teams, TCU, Cincinnati and Boise St., only 5 of their 14 games are against BCS "AQ" teams (36%).

It's pretty obvious what you need to do to have a chance at an undefeated or one-loss season ... schedule soft non-conference opponents, no secret there. That said, I'm sure we'll see the trend continue and become even more pervasive.

I think Brendan does a great job showing how the SEC benefits by playing weaker out of conference teams, hence building up the reputation of the strength of the conference. When one of the conferences "major" powers loses an in conference game, they're not dropped as far in the polls as other major teams in other conferences because they're given the excuse of "well it's a tough conference, loaded with great teams"...

If anyone out there is an SEC football fan, please feel free to post or send in a response, I'm curious what others think.

Great job Brendan!

Bill

Pat's / Colts Game

As a Patriots fan I've been asked this over and over the last couple days:

"What'd you think of the call"?

Honestly, I liked it and was all for it when they went back out on the field. Didn't work out, but I liked the cojones going for it... As Belichick said, he's out there to win, not worry about what other people think.

I thought this, and other similar write ups, conveyed my feelings:

Belichick Goes For It!

It was a great, entertaining game to watch, and it lived up to the "hype" (which most supposed big games don't). Even if New England won this, I still didn't think they'd overtake the Colts for home field in the playoffs (Pat's still have to go to New Orleans for a Monday night game and basically the Colts play no one the rest of the year), so I really didn't feel the game had much playoff location implications.... (CORRECTION - The Colt's go on the road this week at Baltimore and that will be tough. But beyond this game, I don't feel they'll be challenged).

Ask any Colts fan how they felt after they stopped New England after the 3rd down play. They'll tell you they were thrilled to get the ball back with 2 minutes and all 3 time outs left. Distance wouldn't have made much difference, they felt at that point they were going to score and win. Bottom line, so did Belichick, so he went for it.

Anyway, check out the article by David Whitley for a good write up of the statistics of going or not going for it in that situation.

Finally, no matter who won the game, there's still a good likely hood they're going to face each other in the playoffs at Lucas Oil Field. We'll see how the second game comes out!

Bill