I am an alumni of an SEC West school. I love my team, I love the SEC. If I was a fan of any other team in the country outside of the SEC, I would probably hate them too. Why? Because they win. They consistently have great teams.
Is there a bias? I don't think so. If your school's conference was this dominant over the past several years, what would you expect? The SEC has grown into the most powerful conference and deserve the respect and recognition. It's like in the NFL, when my Chargers play the Broncos, who will ESPN talk about? The inconsistent Chargers or Peyton Manning, who has, over time, grown into one of the best if not the best quarterback in NFL history? They talk about Peyton Manning and the Broncos.
As for the top SEC West teams all losing their bowl games this season. They lost. Simple as that. But why do people say they're overrated? They all played great teams from other conferences. For example, if you take Ohio State from last night; that whole game was a grind for both teams. However, what's different about the SEC compared to the Big 10, is when the heart of the regular season rolls around, an SEC team has to play an Alabama-caliber team week after week. I think that is the big question. Could Ohio State or a similar team not only beat Alabama, but beat Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and A&M? I don't think so.
It's one thing to beat an SEC team in a bowl game, but a completely different story to beat SEC teamS during the season.
2015-01-02T13:08:57Z
Professional Liar: So you're saying you would rather play Alabama, LSU, Auburn, A&M, Miss. State, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Ole Miss, as opposed to Rutgers, Penn. State, Illinois, Michigan State, Minnesota, Indiana, and Michigan? The grind is not the same.
Professional Liar2015-01-02T12:37:56Z
Where do we start? Let's start with the fact that "SEC" fans are not fans of a school or an individual team, but of the conference. Now name the other sport where this is acceptable? Nobody was chanting "NFC, NFC, NFC" when Seattle won the Super Bowl last season or like that in any other sport for that matter. Be a fan of your team, and don't be ashamed of it, but don't hide behind the conference.
Then let's talk about championships. A school winning a championship doesn't mean that conference won anything. The school did, not the other 13 members. If Kentucky wins the basketball title this year, is the SEC the best basketball conference? Hell no.
The 2011 championship. ESPN sent that night and the weeks following hyping up a rematch between LSU and Alabama for the title, thus influencing the polls and keeping Alabama, who didn't play for its own conference title game in the national title picture ahead of Oklahoma State, who played a tougher schedule, beat more ranked teams, and of course won its conference. The ratings showed how upset people were with that game, as it was the lowest rated BCS title game of record. But then again, it did get us to where we are now, which is a playoff.
From there we can talk all day long about ESPN and its bias towards that conference, their influence over the polls during the BCS era and the excuses they make when things don't go as they perceive them to be. Like this morning on First Take, they had the audacity to say "the SEC schools outside of Alabama had nothing really to play for and that is why they lost". WTF? When an SEC schools wins in a blowout, it's because of how dominant that conference is, but when they lose in a blowout, it's because they couldn't get up for the game? Please.
Every conference is a grind. That's the other thing. Texas A&M couldn't play defense to save it's life. Miss. State had the 120th ranked pass defense nationally and that's with only playing 3 schools ranked in the top 50 in passing. Alabama was also bad against the pass and they stated it over and over last night. I could go on, but the point is every conference has a different style and schemes. Success in one conference doesn't guarantee success in another. The grind in the SEC is no worse than it is in the Pac-12, Big 10, etc.
Edit: No, but is that grind any different than playing UCLA, USC, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State? No. And that's the point. SEC fans act like only in the SEC is the conference schedule difficult to navigate. It's not.
Because they are over-hyped and overrated. They play pathetic out of conference schedules, 2 and sometimes 3 total doormats (not even division I schools), they also play all the SEC doormats (Vandy, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc), but they get all this bogus 'strength of schedule' credit because of the bogus polls that are rigged by ESPN/CBS/NCAA (who have a TV $$ interested in pumping up the conference). So that way they can claim every SEC match up results in a 'big win' but they don't ding anyone for losing because they lost to another supposed 'top team'. Every year is the same; crappy teams like South Carolina always start out the season near the top 10 -- just so the other SEC teams can get style points when they beat them. Check it out -- 9 SEC teams were ranked in the preseason top 27. What a joke!
Alabama was the only 'very good' team in the entire conference, yet for a chunk of the season they had 4 SEC teams in the top 5 of the national rankings -- absolutely absurd and that was proven out when the SEC got smoked in the bowl games. Miss, Miss St, LSU, Auburn all were drastically overrated. And the winner of the SEC East?? Missouri -- they beat absolutely nobody, and lost to INDIANA!!
So spare us the 'everyone hates us because we're so good' bullsh--. TCU, Oregon and Ohio State would have rampaged through the SEC.
the reason why I don't is because they have big TV contracts with espn the 7:30 pm game plus the CBS game all THE reporters tell us how greatthe SEC TEAMS are and if there are 2 1 loss teams the SEC gets the benefit of the dought ALSO a SEC team never goes up north to play a game ,when they do go out of conference its in a neutral site plus there next to the last game of the year is with some cupcake and the icing on the cake was L S U and Alabama played fer the B C S plus even a 2 loss LSU team and 2 loss Florida team went to the BCS
How well did Alabama do in their bowl game? How about Mississippi State? I heard that 3rd place Mississippi got absolutely pounded by a runnerup from another conference, right?
I think you are living in the past.
If there were not a bias, then the 3rd best in the conference would have been ranked where they deserve instead of 9th place, or they wouldn't have gotten spanked on national TV by TCU.
I like the SEC most of the time. The SEC West has been the best division in college football but the B1G teams beat them in two bowl games this year. OSU, Wisconsin, and MSU could win there too. UofM will be that good in a year or two also.