YHTS Countdown to Kickoff: 2 Days Away, the 2 Best Conferences

By Adam Zimmerman

Conference Pride is a very strange thing. In the SEC, there is such little room at the top that fans of the bottom feeders learn that it is more fun to root for the SEC than worrying about your team losing five games a year. Instead of feeling sorry for themselves watching Mississippi State, Kentucky, or cough Tennessee cough, lose once again, fans of SEC teams label themselves as SEC fans and chant SEC whenever they see a team that beat their team's ass play (and win) against Notre Dame, Ohio State, Texas, Oregon and Oklahoma (losers in 6 of the last 7 National Championship games.) 

Personally, I don't get it. I will not root for Alabama or Oklahoma to win. Anything. And I don't root for the other teams in the NFC East that aren't the Cowboys. I may not mind if TCU, Kansas State, Arkansas or the like wins, but I never feel that their success will make Texas or Tennessee any better. 

With all that being said, it can be fun to talk about/debate/scream at each other over which conference is "the best". Obviously the disagreements begin the as soon as the discussion begins. Do you judge a conference based on its best team? best 2 teams? 4 teams? all the way down? Well comparing conferences' worst teams is as useful as comparing third string quarterbacks or graduate assistant coaches. You have to look at the best teams. In some conferences that may mean picking the top 4 teams, in some it may include 6 teams and some may just have one clear cut favorite (Big 10). In 2013, it is finally interesting to try to slot the top 3 conferences. To do this, albeit in a very subjective way, I ran the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 through the following test:

• How many teams do you expect to finish in the Top 10?
• How many teams do you expect to finish in the Top 15?
• How many teams do you expect to finish in the top 25?

Disclaimer: I know that rankings are never truly reliable or perfect. But they do usually do a fair job of putting a team in the right range. Team A may deserve to be 12 and not 14 but they're in the right range. There may not be a difference between the 16th 'ranked' team and the 23rd 'ranked' team but both are in the right range. Also, the best way to sort conferences is number of players each has picked in the NFL Draft, but that is months away and I know you can't wait that long.

For 2013 I answered the above 3 questions like this:

• In the SEC, the consensus would be surprised if Alabama, Georgia, Florida,Texas A&M and LSU didn't finish in the top 10. (Obviously they might not all make the Top 10 but the smart money is on them in the top 10 as opposed to out of it.) The consensus would be surprised if South Carolina didn't finish in the Top 15 and if Ole Miss didn't end up in the Top 25. 
• In the Big 12, I don't think I'm going out on too big of a limb by saying that I would be shocked if 2 out of Texas, TCU, Ok. State and OU were not in the Top 10. Most people would expect all of those teams to finish in the Top 15 and most people would buy stock in Baylor, Kansas State and Texas Tech finishing in the Top 25. 
• Lastly, for the Pac-12 you can safely expect Oregon and Stanford to finish in the Top 10, Washington and UCLA in the top 15 and Oregon State, USC and Arizona State to be in the Top 25. 

Obviously all of those predictions are made with exactly zero games played so far. If 85% of those teams finish in the top 25, I'll feel pretty good about those predictions. Based on that rundown, it is clear to me that the SEC is still the leader but it looks like the Big 12 and Pac-12 are very close. On to the rankings:

1. SEC

They fill up the AP Top 10 as well as they do the 1st Round of the NFL Draft. While I don't see them winning an 8th straight national championship, they still have better player depth and coaching talent 1-7 than any other conference and I'm not sure it's too close.

And the #2 Conference in America is...........

2. Pac-12

Clearly not by much. In my totally-not-arbitrary formula described above, both the of the '12s should have 2 teams in the Top 10, 2 more in the Top 15 and 2-3 more in the Top 25. So what does it come down to? You gotta start at the top. Pick whoever you think will be the best 2 teams. In the Big 12, the homer in me says that it will be Texas and either TCU or OSU. In the Pac-12 it is clearly Oregon and Stanford. In all four of those possible match-ups, I'd take the West Coast teams. Stanford has the power and Oregon has the speed. Both teams are so locked into their identities that not even coaching changes put up much of an obstacle for them to overcome. 

In the end, debating over conference superiority is like debating over who has the tougher professor. Sure, we'd all like to think that busting our asses to make a B means we're getting a better education, but most of us wouldn't mind a class or two with the teacher who doesn't take attendance and gives out take home tests. We like to explain that our 5-7 record is really not that bad because our team had to play Alabama, LSU, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina (although, the Vols did have to do that so, really, 5 wins is damn impressive). That's all well and good but I'd trade conference pride for Ohio State's conference schedule any day of the week.