Based on my reading of blogs and forums its clear than Virginia Tech football fans are in some combination of despair, worry, depression, or apathy. You wouldn't think a streak of 2 losses would be so detrimental, but its been such a rapid fall from top 5 ranking to coastal division also-ran that I guess we're in a hangover.
So instead this week let me blog on a favorite topic of my college football inner circle: conference superiority.
I have lots of friends in SEC country, alums from schools like Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. They are great college football fans, smart, passionate, hard tailgaters, but very opinionated. This is especially true when it comes to conference strength. SEC dominance is almost a given, something not worth challenging.
A sure fire way to get an SEC fan's temperature going is to tread on this sacred argument, like I did this week. Is the SEC really the strongest conference this year? In 2009, if nothing else its worthy of a debate. Expand the argument further and try to decide if the SEC isn't the strongest conference, who is?
You can base conference strength on lots of things, but start with BCS rankings. How many teams does each conference have in the BCS top 25?
- Big 10 - 4
- Pac 10 - 4
- SEC - 3
- Big 12 - 3
- Big East - 3
- ACC - 3
- Mid-Majors - 4
- Independents - 1
Based on this, you can't find a clear superior conference, and the SEC certainly doesn't distinguish itself. Sure two SEC teams (Florida and Alabama) are 1 and 3, but the Big 10 and Pac 10 both have more top 25 teams and depth of teams is the argument you hear most from SEC pundits.
What is interesting about 2009 is how evenly spread the top 25 really is. The top team of every major conference is in the top 10. No conference has an abundance of teams, but less than 3 or 4 teams. Plus if you simply look objectively at the the BCS top 25, its hard to distinguish teams 4 - 15. They are all pretty even. Teams 1-3 (Florida, Texas, and Alabama) have looked flawed as well.
In my circle of college football blow hards, no conference gets more heat than the Pac 10. Its not deserved. The Pac 10 usually gets judged on the performance of USC. But its deeper than that. Oregon is very strong, and California, Arizona, Stanford, Washington, and Oregon St are very solid teams (you just never see them).
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You can search the web for 'conference ranking' and come up with all sorts of official and unofficial rankings, but Jeff Sagarin's actually has one that lists the Pac-10 #1, SEC #2, and ACC #3. Sagarin's listing of the ACC as #3 
loses all credibility with me.
You might not be impressed with the Pac 10 but the problem with 2009 is that every conference has warts. The Big 12 - have you looked at the teams in the North division latetly? Big 10 - once you get past Iowa, Penn State, and Ohio State its a waste land of mediocrity. And the Big East is still, well, the Big East.
There's no need for me to remind VirginiaTechFan readers of the struggles the ACC has had this year beating Div I-AA and bad Div I-A teams this year. So that basically leaves us with the SEC. Yes the premier SEC teams have flaws this year, and there are drop offs at programs like Georgia and Tennessee.
But objectively, I have to agree with my SEC friends, their conference is still the deepest, strongest, most impressive in the country. Even in 2009.
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