Well, the REAL MONEY, is in research, and the B1G was so far ahead of the SEC it's not even funny, but then we saw how much money the SEC was bringing in and it had to be a little embarrassing the once proud B1G getting whooped on by the idjits of the south, so I believe a top down effort was made to convince all the B1G schools to start investing more in their football/athletic programs. We brought in PSU and then Nebraska, then the TV money really started cooking, and our jumping on the Conf TV network thing first, allowed the B1G to get back to being closer to the SEC overall.
But football is all schools like Bama, Auburn, USCar, Tenn, Miss St and Ole Miss seem to have going for them, so of course they pretty much had to invest more time and energy and money into their football programs. So the SEC is probably still a little better, mostly because they more often than not have that one team that seems to be able to beat anyone. Usually Bama, but not always, when Bama has an off year, another team steps up, Aub, Flor, LSU. We seem to have to depend only on Ohio St every year. It hurt the B1G when PSU got nailed for the whole pedo thing. Toss in UW's being too one dimensional and Michigan struggling to find a good coach, oh and Nebraska's just disappearing from the discussion altogether. MSU having that nice little run they had helped, and now the Gophers being on the rise will help as well. I think PSU has recovered and Iowa remains always decent. We'll remain right on the SEC's heels until we get a 2nd or 3rd program able to win it all occasionally. One thing that helps is the talent must be getting more spread out into other conferences, as more and more SEC programs seem to be losing early season games to non-conference opponents they shouldn't be losing to.