Who's Da Best
While watching the second half of the Miami-Louisville game (a contest which I shudder to say, may earn the ESPN created-tag "Instant Classic") I started to wonder just how great this new ACC is in football right now. As far as I can tell, the biggest non-conference win the ACC can claim is the one it got last night - just barely.
But when I started to think about which conference can lay claim to being the nation's best, I couldn't come up with a very good answer.
The problem is that there just aren't that many huge non-conference matchups out there. The best comparison point we get for conferences really doesn't come until the bowls comer around.
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Take the SEC, for example. I'd rank it No. 1, if pressed for an answer. With Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Florida and Tennessee, it certainly seems stacked. But how can we tell? The most impressive - and I used that term loosely - non-conference win those five teams own may be LSU's escape at home against Oregon State - a game the Beavers would have won if their kicker could actually kick extra points. So all we really know about the SEC is that their best teams can beat up on the Louisiana-Monroes of the world and they can beat up on each other.
It's understandable. When one loss can derail your shot at the national title, why take chances in non-conference games when you don't have to? Still, it makes it hard to claim your conference is the best - unless you believe pre-season rankings are infallible.
So what do you think? Is there a clear No. 1 conference? Or is it impossible to tell?
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