Pac 10 football as good as SEC football?

I came across an old cover of the  September 24, 2007  issue of Sports Illustrated.  The cover had the question: Pac-10 or SEC: Which Is Stronger? Are they really serious? The media just loves USC and the Pac-10 for some reason. Let me address this issue before I have a stroke!

There is no doubt that USC is a fine football program. And they are currently the #4 ranked college football team in  the preseason polls. And they won an uncontested National Championship in 2004.   But just because of one team’s accomplishments doesn’t mean that the Pac-10 is on par with the SEC as a football conference, especially year in and year out.  I will give you that the Pac 10 has gotten better in recent years with Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona State showing up in the polls more consistently.  But the question is which conference is stronger?  Well let’s just let the numbers from history answer that.

Currently the SEC has four football teams in the top 10 preseaon polls,  and five in the top 20.  The Pac-10 has one in the top 10  just three in the top 20 overall.  Now let’s look at the last several years and see which conference had more teams in the final top 25 polls:

2008: SEC–4 Pac-10–3
2007: SEC–5 Pac-10–4
2006: SEC–5 Pac-10–4
2005: SEC–5 Pac-10–3
2004: SEC–5 Pac-10–3
2003: SEC–5 Pac-10–2

Let’s also look at the national college football championship. The SEC claims the current defending national champion and overall, have had 7 national champions since 1990 including the split title of 2003 in which LSU was number one and won the BCS so called “National Championship” bowl game between #1 and #2, but the AP poll voted USC as number one. Go figure.

The Pac-10 has had 3 national champions during that same time, but twice it was USC if you do in fact include the 2003 split title. So the way that I count the numbers it’s 7-3.

So what does all of this really mean? It means basically that the media wants to find a reason to promote USC and the Pac-10, which I don’t understand.  I am obviously in favor of the SEC, but the numbers don’t lie.

If you sit back and just look at the last several years, there really is no football basis for the question that Sports Illustrated asked. Maybe if they had asked if USC could win the SEC, THAT would be a good question for football fans to ponder.