It’s good to be the SEC.
The conference’s superiority complex has solid footing these days, including three consecutive BCS national titles and four since 2003.
Here are recently released results from the Department of Duh (DOD) census, required every decade by Article 1 of the BCS Constitution: There are five major conferences, five categorized as “non-Automatic Qualifiers” and the sensational, stand-alone Southeastern Conference.
The SEC is so dominant, it nearly has turned fourth-year South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier into a self-effacing wallflower.
“I’m a 7-and-sort-of-6 coach right now,” said Spurrier, who led Florida to the national title in 1996.
It was like Frank Sinatra saying, “I used to be able to sing.”
It’s OK to rank BCS conferences any way you want this year, as long as the SEC is first. Every other league is a hood ornament.
Here’s my personal pecking order:
1. SEC
2. Big 12
3. Pacific-10
4. Atlantic Coast
5. Big Ten
6. Big East
Recent SEC media days in Alabama reminded one of Roman rulers and numerals, a decadent place where conquerors convened to brag and gorge. Ah, it’s good to be emperor!
Render unto Gainesville all that is Gainesville’s.
SEC Caesar-Commissioner Mike Slive stood up and addressed the masses.
“We are witness to one of the conference’s most successful, competitive periods in its long and distinguished history, a period that someday may be called the SEC’s Golden Age,” Slive said.
And then everyone ate grapes.
What’s to argue? The SEC has won four national titles since 2003, two each by Florida and Louisiana State.
You could quibble that USC deserved the BCS bid over LSU in 2003, and there’s no question Florida got a lucky decimal-points bounce in 2006, when the Gators edged Michigan for No. 2 in the BCS standings.
The SEC always thought it was the best, even when it wasn’t. But now it is.
The SEC boasts four coaches who have won major-college national titles: Spurrier, Urban Meyer, Les Miles and Nick Saban. It had five until Tennessee’s Phil Fulmer, who led the Vols to the first BCS crown in 1998, went into a slump and got run out of Knoxville.
The SEC has an over-the-top landscape no circus tent can cover. Coaches aren’t afraid to fling stinging barbs. More than 1,000 press members were credentialed for media, um, days. One reporter even dared to ask Florida quarterback Tim Tebow if he was a virgin. And Tebow said yes.
The SEC milked hours of free publicity over a frivolous controversy regarding which coach did not vote Tebow to the conference’s preseason first team. It was Spurrier, the former Florida icon, who blamed the error on a staffer and petitioned to have his vote changed.
Florida opens the season as the preeminent favorite to win its third national title in four years.
Tebow is America’s best player and even odds to become the second player to win two Heisman Trophy awards. Georgia began last year at No. 1, and Saban had Alabama on top before being overtaken by Florida.
This year, smart people say, watch out for Mississippi.
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chris.dufresne@latimes.com
