Maybe you misheard, I counted 0-13. By the way, I assume that means that the opponent was in the Top 6 at the time they played because teams that lose a bunch of games don’t end up in the Top 6 at the end of the season. Either way that’s a pretty stupid and arbitrary statistic. Great teams don’t generally lose. Why use a Top 6 cut off? Why not Top 10?
By contrast, I looked at the entire ACC schedule (all teams, not just the bottom of the barrel), there were about 8 games against Top 6 opponents. All but two (UGA and UF) were against FSU or ND. Only NC State had a win (against FSU). The Big 10 schedule was even worse; only Michigan (vs Alabama in Week 1) and Wisconsin (vs Stanford in Rose Bowl) even played against a Top 6 (at the time) team, both loses. Granted, that doesn’t include OSU or Penn State but the point remains.
I don’t think he means “top 6 in the rankings” but rather “the best 6 teams in the conference” which would mean Alabama, LSU, Texas A&M, Georgia, USC, and Florida.
Of course you expect the bottom tier to lose most of their games against the top tier; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in the bottom. But it seems like a good way to measure overall strength of the conference; or at least, balance.
In fairness to Oredigger, I stopped watching that game in the 3rd quarter, because the Dawgs looked so bad and I didn’t want to watch them lose to damn Nebraska. They finally got things straightened out end, but that should have been a buttkickin’ comparable to what Alabama did to Notre Dame. Still, I think Georgia would have handled ND almost as well as 'Bama did.
Yep, you’re absolutely right. I mean, I’m a Georgia fan and was rooting for the Tide, but I completely get the SEC-fatigue that affects the rest of the country. Seeing Alabama and Florida and LSU year after year isn’t fun. I’m glad 'Bama won, but I was really hoping for an exciting, good game. I didn’t get it.
True dat. I was very, very happy to see Florida get humiliated in the Sugar Bowl. I’ll root for The University of Al-Qaeda Fighting Pedophiles over Florida.
Well, that does make a lot more sense. I won’t argue there aren’t a handful of crummy teams at the bottom of the SEC or mediocre teams in the middle. Hell, my beloved Gamecocks were in both those categories for a LONG time. But the same is true of any conference. I don’t think there any many, aside from True SEC Loonies, who think the bottom of the SEC is better than the top of other conferences.
There are a *lot *of True SEC Loonies out there. Perhaps not strictly “top” < “bottom”, but you sure hear a lot of “Team X would finish 5th in the SEC West” crap, whenever there’s a discussion of any good team outside the SEC.
Interesting that nobody else heard about it until maybe four or five years ago. And I expect we’ll stop hearing about it - not right away, but eventually - after the SEC stops winning titles every year, which has to happen at some point. I still think the entire notion is weird. The conferences are just commercial alliances. Rooting for an entire conference is like rooting for a huge corporate conglomerate because you like one of their products.
Manti Teo, had the same view of most of the Bamer touchdowns as Michelangelo had of the Sistine Chapel for 20 years.
He’s been renamed Boyti Teo. He needs to ship any and all trophies he received this year to Jadeveon Clowney, at South Carolina who was clearly the best defensive player in the country.
With all the talk about McCarron’s girl friend what about his mother?
Milf city. (In red, below)
It should be noted that while all conferences shift over time, and are money-driven (as are all aspects of college football and basketball), the SEC represents a distinct area of the country. It doesn’t have geographical absurdities like West Virginia being in the Big 12 or South Florida in the Big East. All the teams are in the Southeast. This helps give it more of a real identity.
…as does this. No region of the nation is as oft-insulted as the South, which encourages sticking together.
On the other hand, they play the closest thing to NFL football outside the NFL. The speed and athleticism are highly entertaining to me, anyway.
As a Kentucky fan, I can assure you that no one thinks our football team can beat anyone of note.
The article I linked to traces it to the 1924 Rose Bowl, and points out why the SEC transcends being merely a commercial alliance: it ties into a regional pride in a way other conferences do not.
I felt bad for Notre Dame’s players as the game wore on, the effort was clearly there, but they were facing a team that’s on a different level of size, strength, and athleticism.
I’m pretty sure Urban Meyer is going to simmer down some SEC warcries next season, as well as introduce the usually plodding Big 10 to the forward pass.
Did you…did you just compare conference pride to secessionism? Really? Stop this, Marley. You’re better than this.
The only reason you haven’t heard about it until recently is because you haven’t been listening. SEC pride is very, very real, and it predates your time frame by a long way. I’m 41 years old, and when I was growing up, my father, a staunch football fan, used to tell me that he rooted for any SEC team over any out-of-conference team every time. This was in the 1970’s, and the idea was not new then either, nor was it isolated in my family. Everyone I knew talked like this. The only possible exceptions were in-state rivals (Auburn in our case) and Tenne-goddamn-see. And EVEN THEN, the strictures would be relaxed more often than not, depending on recent history.
It began a long, long time ago. It began, arguably, when Alabama faced the biggest, baddest team in the nation, Washington, in the 1926 Rose Bowl. This was a chance to strike back at Reconstruction, against H.L. Mencken writing articles in Boston about the small cranial capacity of the average Southerner. Against all the contempt that had been piled upon Southerners’ heads by the national media. Alabama literally carried the honor of the entire South with them to Pasadena. It was specifically pitched that way to the players and the rest of the region, and supporters from all over the South flocked to the Alabama football team like mad.
And Alabama WON. After the game, during the train ride home, the team was stopped in virtually every town in the South by huge, jubilant crowds.
Look, you may pooh-pooh that game and the Southern reaction to that game as ancient, irrelevant history, but if you do, be aware that this is why Southerners say that you don’t understand what football means down here.
Every year, to this day, I hear the story of the 1926 Rose Bowl. It’s told in barber shops, restaurants, and football games every single year, and it always will be. That game changed the South. You may laugh at that, but it’s true nonetheless, and its memory fuels the cultural impact of college football throughout the entire region to the present day.
And as long as Southerners hear about how backward the South is, about how we’re ignorant rednecks, about how, when you hear our accents, you can’t help but think we’re dumb, about how we’re poor and recidivist and bible-beating red-staters, and how could anybody live there because it’s so primitive and hot anyway, it’s going to make us mad. That goes for liberals and conservatives, white and black, rich and poor.
And we’re going to strike back, at least partially, through football.
Until you understand that, you should never, ever pretend to understand what football means to the South.
And if all that amuses you, or makes you think even worse about us, congratulations. You’ve just fueled the fire even more. We’re past begging for approval. Now we just want to beat you. And we will.
Keep dreaming. If Urban Meyer beats an SEC team next year for the title, it will have precisely the opposite effect you think it will have. The entire South will look at it like it’s a form of oppression, and we won’t stop until we’re back on top. That’s the way it works here. Alabama listened to so much “Your time is over! Alabama will never be back on top! The Bear is dead, losers!” bullshit. SO much. You see what all that accomplished.
Here’s a Mark Childress article in the Wall Street Journal that attempts to explain it.
And the comment by Robert Gualaty that says, “As long as Bama fans and grads get me my fries in under 2 minutes while they’re still hot, they can have whatever football culture they want.”? That shit is EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
“Catholics vs. Cousins”? “Golden Domers vs. Mobile Homers”?
Ogre, those posts were wonderful. Because I’m a Southerner, and therefore incapable of understanding or properly executing a polite golf clap, please allow me to recognize your brilliance with an understated and tasteful “YEEEEHAWWWW!”
No, it’s mutated quite a bit by this point. Southern football has been completely, enthusiastically integrated by now. That by itself would be enough to falsify your Civil War idea. By now, it’s more of a reaction to the generalized condescension poured upon the South by outsiders. It’s still PC to make fun of rednecks and country folk. The first thing I heard when I moved to DC a few years ago was, “Gosh, you actually grew up in Alabama? I’ve never met anybody who grew up in Alabama! Where’s your accent? Did you go to college?” :rolleyes:
You know what? We don’t like that. Just, you know, FYI.
