Every week, TSS associate editors Bart Doan and Terry Johnson join staff writer Kevin Causey in our weekly roundtable to discuss college, football’s hottest topics.
Question: After five weeks, which is the best conference in college football?
Bart Doan:
On Twitter @TheCoachBart
I’m definitely taking the cheap way out and saying this is a lot like serving jury duty and 10 minutes after you sit down, being asked to render a verdict. The first lawyer is barely through his garbling at that point. As always, everyone has different criteria for these … is it who has the most dominant teams, is it top to bottom, is it something else? I say the only way you can measure it is when teams play other out of conference Power 5 teams and then you go and ignore the fact that teams improve or decline over the course of a season.
In other words, hogwash. So you look at the (rare) OOC games from this season that helped shape our thoughts early … games like Texas A&M over Arizona State, Alabama over Wisconsin, Michigan State over Oregon … and you realize that the shine has come off of each of those wins pretty heavily since we’ve learned more about the teams.
After one week it was far and away the SEC because we were ranking things based solely on one game + our thoughts going into the season – actual reality. The answer to this question is that we’ll never know, but we’re certainly not close to being on our way now. Let’s let a few more out of conference games shape up and then call me back.
Kevin Causey:
On Twitter @CFBZ
Call me crazy but I still think it’s the SEC, although it is a lot closer than in years past. My runners-up are the Big Ten and the Pac-12. The Pac-12 has the benefit of having a very deep league but it’s questionable if anybody in the Pac-12 is really that good (although Utah looks the part so far). The Big Ten isn’t as deep as the Pac-12, but Ohio State and Michigan State (and possibly Northwestern) are really carrying the Big Ten flag so far.
My pick is the SEC, because I still think the depth at the top of the league is better than any other. Alabama, Florida (yes, I went there), A&M, LSU, Ole Miss and then Georgia are still stronger than the top six from the other conferences, but that’s just one man’s opinion.
Terry Johnson:
On Twitter @SectionTPJ
This is a difficult question to answer, because college football’s heavyweights don’t play often enough during the regular season. With such a small sample size to choose from, it’s easy to come to the wrong conclusion about which conference is the best.
That was certainly the case last year. At the end of the regular season, it looked like the SEC was the best conference in the land. However, the league struggled in the postseason, finishing 2-4 against ranked opponents, including a first-round exit by Alabama in the College Football Playoff.
Conversely, the Pac-12 was considered a step behind the SEC heading into the bowls. But, after posting a 5-1 against ranked teams in the postseason — highlighted by an Oregon victory over a Florida State squad that hadn’t lost a game in almost two years — many felt that the Pac-12 was the toughest conference in the land after all of the games were in the books.
So, which side was right? That depends on what colors you wear.
In other words: every league has its positives and negatives, and whether one conference is better than another depends solely on what metrics are used. As a “glass is half full”-type of guy, I could make a case for any of the Power 5 conferences at this point.
However, since I can only pick one, I’ll go with the Pac-12. Although other conferences might have more talent at the top, the Pac-12 is the deepest league in the country. After all, it’s the only conference that doesn’t have a single team with a losing record. There’s no way to make that happen — especially this late in the season — without having a lot of solid teams in the league.
