Is it the SEC? or is it Saban and Meyer? The case could be made that they are mostly responsible for 6 of those 7.....(i.e. Miles won with Saban's scraps - 2 losses no less)
It's Alabama and Florida and then NCAA rules violations. The NCAA really needs to get off of their arse and adopt the guilty until proven innocent model because it's actually a more rational train of thought in collegiate athletics. They seriously need to take a look at the Baylor athletic program as well.
No what it is the very long layoff. SEC teams are usually great defensive teams, and the very long lays off usually hurt great offensive teams, and help great defensive teams.
I have made this same argument a couple of times. The SEC ain't Dominant...they just have a couple of teams that are making the entire conference look great
You locate yourself where the highest concentration of elite athletes are. Hire the best and most task oriented coaches, then sign the best players. Then you look at what the future likely holds for Bama, LSU, A&M, Florida, S. Carolina and Georgia. Also consider the recruits that Ole Miss, and even Miss State are getting. They finished 5 teams in the top 10. 7 in the top 15. I'd call the SEC dominant. Very dominant.
I think LSU and Les Miles should get a bit more credit after the 2011 13-0 run, which included an unprecedented intra-division rematch with Bama in the title game (AFTER beating them on their home field), which Saban of course won due to the long layoff. If Florida had to replay them in 2008 they'd probably have lost then too. It's unfair to give Saban the credit for the 2007 title.
The reality is that the SEC has some very good programs (Alabama & LSU are at the top). The reason the SEC is considered the best conference is because the top teams in the SEC are better than the top teams in any other conference. Anyone that has watched football for the past few years realizes that LSU has as much to do with the SEC dominance as any school in the conference.
It's availability of talent within a 5 hr radius and coaching. I read somewhere last week that there were 21 former players from the state of Florida in the Super Bowl last week. That alone says something about the concentration of elite talent in the Southeast. I think that the SEC is at the top and will remain there, as long as they continue to get the lion's share of this elite talent and as long as they are able to keep some of the game's best coaches. And the gap is currently widening. Some interesting stats, Alabama alone got more five star players in this last class than the entire ACC and Big 12 CONFERENCES combined, and we did NOT oversign anybody(we signed the SEC hard limit of 25), and we only gray-shirted one player, Bradley Bozeman, for medical reasons(he suffered a season-ending injury this past year and he even wanted an extra yr for rehab and recovery). Kentucky was 13th in the SEC in recruiting this past yr--in the Big 12 they would have been FOURTH. Amazingly, no team in the Big 12 even signed a 5 star player--and given OU and Texas as members, that alone is downright unbelievable. Nothing lasts forever, but for right now the SEC, compositely as a conference, is at a totally different level from all the others and chances are we will continue to be very well represented in the new playoff format that is coming.
I'm not sure I agree with all of that. I do agree that the south is talent rich, and that really benefits the SEC. However, there are still far more talented players than there are schools in the SEC. So, at some point, coaching makes a huge difference. That's why I consider Saban the best in the game right now (not just for his ability alone, but his ability to bring in other coaches that are equally talented). While the south is deep with talents, it's no deeper than Texas and California. The SEC benefits from it's reputation right now, so it's able to take full advantage of that talent in the South. So, until someone can knock off the SEC, you're right, it will continue status quo. If nothing, A&M has proven that a team built for the Big XII can win in the SEC. Unfortunately (for us Big XII folks), we only got one year's worth of Data, as A&M has officially arrived at SEC level recruiting with this year's class.
Its all about oversigning and cheatin; until the Big 12 gets on board with both it will continue to lag far behind the SEC
Of course the SEC is widening the gap. Everyone knows that signing a boatload of 5 stars always translates into tons of wins and championships 2-3 years later. Look at Flordia State and Texas.
FSU doesn't have the coaching piece--I know you already know that about the whorns. Jimbo Fisher is the most overrated coach in America, IMO. He's building a staff of recruiters, not coaches. That is where he is going wrong. He was a great OC, but he has yet to prove to me that he is HC material. Give me an ACC schedule and their talent and you and I could win 10 games a year in Tallahassee.
Yeaaaaah, I think that the rest of the country isn't going to let you all stay up on your high horse forever. Political influence will get in the way of the game you dominate because there is a lot of money at stake and the SEC, even if it hogs the crystal balls lately, is only one of five major conferences. Look for the B1G to get old and huffy, look for the ACC and Pac 12 to get coastal elitist and look for the Big 12 to get poaches by other conferences looking to expand... errrr, I mean, look for the Big 12 to get a Texas-sized ego. They're going to end your football dominance by 1- Changing the rules of college football to their benefit via recruiting, capping the amount of money you can pay coaches/charge for tickets/spend on recruiting, etc. 2- Change your conference by creating a cap on the number of teams that a specific conference can have. Or, divide and conquer by creating one large football league that has no S-E-C or B1G to speak of but rather, one rep per state/region for major football 3- Change your postseason dominance by disallowing SEC from having more than one team contend for the title. This is probably the first one that's going to happen. A four-team playoff will have no more than ONE sec team... so the other four major conferences will vote and SEC will vote against and be overruled. Use your tough tough tough conference schedule to determine your one representative. 4- Use the NCAA to find your rule bending and breaking and punish the maximum extent that it can. The only ones that will cry when an SEC team gets the death penalty are those teams fans and the SEC. The rest of us will be like "FINALLY!"
I think the 4 man playoff will swing the pendulum back toward benefitting the better offensive team since Sabna(or whichever SEC coach) will no longer have 5 weeks to prepare for the oppositions offense. I credit the SEC for understanding the system and adapting thies teams to play for titles. Strong defenses and power runnig games will always be favored in the current BCS title game. If Florida had had only one or two weeks to prepare for OU's offense in the 2009 national titel game I think we would have won by 2 to 3 scores.
