2011 Auburn 2010 Alabama 2009 Florida 2008 LSU 2007 Florida There seems to be a pattern here. Hmm....but what is it? Anyone?
1) "Warm weather" football is for wimps. 2) That's alright, that's okay, those players will be working for me someday!
Don't fade a strong trend. Conference with most BCS bowl appearances Big Ten (21) Conference with most BCS bowl game wins SEC (14) Conference with most championships SEC (6) You forgot that Tennessee won the first BCS game in '98-'99. And in 2004-05 season Auburn went 13-0 and was left out of the championship game. Alot of coaches and scouts felt that Auburn would have given USC a much better challenge than Oklahoma, and their analysis was born out when USC drubbed OU by a score of 55-19 in the BCS title game. Nine of the 12 head coaches in the SEC make at least $2 million per year, and four make at least $3 million per year. Great Breakdown: Auburn's BCS Win Removes Last Doubts That SEC Is the Best...but Why? By Donald Fincher (Analyst) on January 11, 2011 The champion of the SEC has now won the last five national title games. That's pretty astounding. What's more astounding is since the beginning of the BCS era, the SEC champion has won seven of the 13 BCS title games. That's one more than half of them so far. And they've done it against the champions of the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and now the Pac-10. But perhaps the most astonishing feat of all of that is the depth. Since the BCS era started in 1998, a total of five DIFFERENT SEC teams have won the title. That would be Tennessee, LSU (twice), Florida (twice), Alabama and now Auburn. That means that almost HALF of the teams in the SEC have won the national title since 1998. Given there have only been six teams outside of the SEC winning the title, that means the SEC has had roughly as many teams win the national title as ALL OTHER CONFERENCES COMBINED. There are many that attempt to down play how good the SEC is by saying the conference is "top heavy." But when no fewer than five teams have won the title in the last 13 years, the top is not just one or two teams. It's half the league. In the Big 12 (soon to be down to 10 teams), Oklahoma and/or Texas need only win against each other. After that, they can pretty much coast to the conference title. And the Big Ten is usually the same. Michigan has been down which has left a power vacuum. But once they are back, Iowa or Wisconsin will fall back to middling teams, and the road to the conference title will again run through the winner of "The Game." Truly the SEC is the land of giants. And I believe that is why the SEC champion is so well prepared to continue to win the title. Here are the reasons I believe the SEC keeps winning title games: 1. SEC teams are very accustomed to playing huge games. The bright lights not only don't bother them but are almost ho-hum to them. It was obvious in tonight's Auburn/Oregon game that Oregon had a bad case of the nerves that Auburn just didn't have. To underscore this point, the MVP for Auburn was a true freshman. But by the end of an SEC season, he's prepared to be that kind of player on a big stage. 2. SEC teams are used to playing tougher competition than what they see when bowl season comes around. When a team plays the likes of Florida, Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Auburn, Tennessee (when they're good), Arkansas and South Carolina, they are battle tested. They've seen the fast, the big, the tough, the hostile, the talented, the determined, and they've seen them every week. They play tougher conference games than bowl games which is why the SEC wins the majority of their bowls most years...especially the big bowls. The SEC's record in national titles is 7-0. Their BCS bowl record outside of the title game is nothing to scoff at either. 3. The SEC has both size and speed. Brent Musburger made the comment tonight that if Oregon thought they'd be faster than Auburn, they were wrong. The Big Ten can keep up with the size of the SEC but not the speed. Sure, those teams have fast players at skill positions but not the speed all up and down the defensive line and linebacker corps. Oregon, conversely, had the speed but not the size. Nobody has both in such quantities as the SEC. 4. The SEC has the coaching edge. The SEC now has four coaches that have won national titles. If Urban Meyer had not retired, it would have been five. That's five teams out of 12 (or almost half) that would have been coached by a national title winning coach. And Mississippi State's Dan Mullen has been credited largely with being a key component in the Florida titles of late while Florida's new coach, Will Muschamp, was part of a national title team last year at Texas. 5. The players that want to play against the best and get prepared for the NFL play in the SEC. As the saying goes, the rich get richer. And with the current streak that the SEC is on, it's become well known to high school "ballers" that if they want to really get prepared for the draft and increase their stock, they should go play against the best week in and week out. So the teams get stronger and stronger. With traditional powers having some difficulties like Texas falling apart and under-performing, Michigan going through a coaching crisis, USC on probation, Miami mired in mediocrity, Notre Dame no longer being the name it once was and probably never will again and Ohio State only this year getting their first bowl win over an SEC team (and that because of an Arkansas miscue where they dove on a blocked punt rather than running it in for the lead), it's difficult to argue that anyone will knock the SEC off their current perch next season. The SEC has won so much they're starting to consider that national title a birthright. There are a lot of haters that should be appreciators instead. The conference is as deep as any has ever been. We are definitely in the era of the SEC.
the next yr will be 2011? The SEC has been the dominant provider of talent to the NFL for a while and generally plays a meaner, faster style game than other conferences. Oregon never faced a defense like this before.
Bone beat me to it and with actual explanations. " There are a lot of haters that should be appreciators instead. The conference is as deep as any has ever been. We are definitely in the era of the SEC." From Bone's post and the truth no matter how much many don't like it.
Chip Kelly kept the score close by gambling on fourth down and with copious amounts of gadgetry - it was obvious by the second series in the game that Oregon's line play was in serious trouble on both sides of the ball. Cam Newton wasn't much of a factor, and neither was Oregon's running game for that matter. Urban Meyer's comments about using the spread offense in the redzone, and especially around the goal line, were especially telling. Banjo is spot on about NFL players - the numerical fact of the matter is that the SEC places more players in the NFL than any other conference, and that has actually been the case for a few decades now.
The strength of schedule is absolutely brutal. On an average year, Florida has to play 7 ranked teams. And in some of those years 5 teams in the top 10! Considering that one loss usually drops you out of the title hunt and at least 2 or 3 of those top 10 opponents are on the road, one can see just how tough these teams have to be. Of course the even more amazing statistic is that since all these SEC teams have to play each other and in many years they just beat each other up thereby eliminating each other from the BCS championship, yet they still have won the last 5 BCS titles. That stat is scary. Consider that most schools in the big 10, pac-10 or big 12 may only need to play one top 10 team to get to the title game and many times that game is at home. It just shows you the kind of odds against each and every SEC school to even get to the title game. Yet despite all of that, they have won 5 titles in a row. Absolutely amazing.
"The strength of schedule is absolutely brutal." That hurts them with the current BCS system (in spite of the statistical 'smoothing'), but will help them whenever a playoff system is enacted. I am always amused when sports reporters and the media quizzed the TCU head coach about their strength of schedule in 2010, and he always included in their response the epic win in 2005 against Oklahoma when they OU featured Adrian Peterson. Any SEC team could make that kind of analogous statement about whomever they played in the conference in the past week, week in and week out, for the entire conference schedule.