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 The SEC, the BCS ....and those other conferences
EXTRA POINT: Tough SEC eliminates self from BCS contention
By Josh Moon
Montgomery Advertiser
There are no unbeaten teams in the Southeastern Conference.
Florida, which lost to Auburn last Saturday, was the last to fall.
That most likely means one thing: There will be no SEC team in the BCS title game.
That's just wrong.
Take a look at the polls right now. Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, LSU and Arkansas are all ranked in the top 20 in the latest BCS standings. In the USA Today coaches poll, six of the 12 SEC teams show up. In both the coaches and AP polls, there are three SEC teams in the top 10.
Yet, all of them are on the outside of the national championship race.
The highest ranked conference team is Auburn, which somehow slid into the No. 4 slot in the first BCS rankings ahead of two of the four remaining unbeatens. But let's be real, unlesss four of the five unbeaten teams -- Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Louisville and West Virginia -- lose, the Tigers have no shot at a national title.
Even if Auburn manages to win the rest of its games and the SEC Championship Game, the best it can hope for is a nice bowl game.
It seems odd that a system set up to reward teams for scheduling quality football games is punishing an entire conference that is built around that very idea.
SEC teams, year in and year out, are punished by the system for playing in an unbelievably tough conference. In the meantime, teams in lesser conferences are blowing out their weak conference opponents and sliding to the top of the standings.
Look at these other conferences.
In the Big Ten, which features No. 1 Ohio State and No. 3 Michigan, there are three ranked teams. Once you dip below OSU, Michigan and Wisconsin, there's nothing there. The fourth-best team in that conference, Purdue, was forced into overtime by Miami of Ohio.
The Pac-10 also has three decent teams -- No. 2 USC, No. 11 California and No. 16 Oregon. After that, the conference falls off the talent cliff.
How about the Big East, you ask? Even more horrible. Once you move past No. 4 West Virginia and No. 6 Louisville there are six teams that would all rather be playing basketball right now.
Most SEC schools wouldn't even schedule the remaining Big East teams for fear of damaging their strength of schedule ratings. For goodness' sake, the fourth-best team in that conference is Pittsburgh, which lost by 10 at home to Michigan State -- the ninth-best team in the Big Ten.
In every one of these conferences, after the top teams get past their two, maybe three tough games, they're coasting.
Not in the SEC.
In conference play alone, SEC teams will play a minimum of four ranked teams this season.
On top of the ranked teams, you've also got Alabama, Vanderbilt and South Carolina to deal with. Only the Mississippi schools and Kentucky provide some relief.
Out of a 12-member conference, nine teams have a legit shot to win every game they play, no matter the opponent.
If you're skeptical of that, just ask Michigan. The Wolverines opened the season against Vandy and needed two late touchdowns to put the game away. The No. 3 team in the country led by just six points over the SEC's eighth-best team with three minutes left in the third quarter.
Then there's Tennessee's absolute thumping of Missouri. The SEC's fourth best team beat the Big 12's third best by 26. That came a couple of weeks after the Vols dominated Cal -- the Pac-10's second-best team.
Auburn sent Washington State back home with a 26-point loss and LSU pounded down Arizona.
The only black eye for the SEC came when Arkansas was whipped handily by USC to open the year. Still, though, the Hogs are, at best, the conference's fifth-best team and USC sits at No. 2 in the BCS.
The whole flawed system is such a joke. The SEC handles college football the way it should be handled -- by putting great teams on the field week after week, playing the games to determine the two best teams and then matching those teams in a championship game.
But because the SEC plays football too well, the conference is punished by the national system over and over again.
Josh Moon, who covers Alabama State athletics for the Advertiser, may be reached by phone at 334-240-0194 or by fax at 334-261-1548. His e-mail is jmoon@gannett.com.
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