I can trash the SEC all I want. Once again their arogance failed to meet reality. Who cares who graduated who? Last time I checked the game was played with the players available, and not with would have, could have, and should have. So ASU is what greater than, equal to OSU this year? Not even close. as usual people are falling all over them selves to make excuses for them. Where did you get middle of the pack? Pre-season coaches polls had them Second in the east, seems a bit of as distance from the "middle of the pack".[/QUOTE]
Yes, you are free to trash the SEC all you want, that is your right. I guess the point I was trying to make, and poorly so I guess, is that if our confrence would take care of business in big games, we would have a better reputation and the SEC wouldn't matter. That was my point when I said, "don't trash the SEC, we need to do better."
As for who graduated who, I was just responding to your post about Georgia. You were using them as an example of how overrated you seem to feel the SEC is. I was simply pointing out that Georgia went on the road last year and beat a team rather handily that wasn't located in the deep south, and this year went on the road again against a top ten team and was in the game for 3-plus quarters, all of this with a team hit by gradution and a quarterback starting his first game. Those are facts you can't ignore. My point here was, I don't think this one game speaks bad of Georgia or the SEC. This years' Georgia team will not be a typical one. They will struggle by their standards.
I was wrong for saying Georgia is middle of the pack? Just watch, they will be lucky to finish second in the east division and as someone pointed out, second in the east is really fifth or sixth in that confrence. Florida, LSU, Alabama and Ole Miss are better than Georgia and the Bulldogs may struggle with South Carolina, Tennessee and Auburn.
If you really want to look at how the SEC does out of the deep south just look at the records. I did a little research and compared the Big 10 to the SEC from 2000 thru 2008. I did this rather quickly so I'm not saying there isn't a mistake or two, but this is close enough to get the idea. I looked at games played by each team in both conferences outside of the geographic conference boundries. One thing that immediately stands out is the sheer volume of games, or lack their of, on the part of the SEC outside of their conference geography. This was no surprise to anyone. The SEC in those 9 years only played 31 such games. The Big 10 on the other hand played 124. That is a difference of 93 games. Now, it should be noted that I included bowl games and since the majority of those games are played in the south, and of course don't forget Tempe and Pasadena, the Big 10 will logically have a larger number. You can figure that about half of the 93 more games played by the Big 10 can be attributed to bowl games. Having laid that groundwork, who wins more games outside of their geographic boundry? Well, the SEC has a win percentage of .350 (11-20) where the Big 10 is .410 (51-73). Not that big of a difference is it? I should note that head-to-head, most of which are bowl games down south, the Big 10 is 8-14 against the SEC in that same time span (2000-2008).
So why do SEC fans have, to use your words, so much "arrogance?" Probably because the majority of the media tells them they are the best. Plus, over the last nine years they have 4 titles where the Big 10 only has one. You hear that enough and you start to believe it. The same thing works in reverse with the Big 10, which the media is ripping right now for our performance in big games, which is why I said don't trash the SEC. We just need to take care of business and the accolades will come.
It is time for the Big 10 to step it up. If our conference wants the spotlight again we need to beat Air Force and Cal. Michigan can't lose to Notre Dame and Ohio State needs to take care of USC. Everyone else needs to take care of business as well. If these things happen people will talk about the Big 10, not the SEC.
The ball is in our court. We control our own destiny.
BTW, only Ohio State, Wisconsin and Northwestern played more games than our Gophers outside the Big 10's geographic boundries. For the record the Gophers were 6-6.
GO GOPHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
