The SEC Spin Has Begun

So we’ve come to the point in the college football season when people are starting to think about—or, more accurately, worry about—the BCS standings.

We’ve got Brad Edwards making his hourly appearances on ESPN to break down the rankings. We’ve got Pete Carroll talking, already, about USC not getting a fair shake. We’ve got Penn State fans wringing their hands over potentially getting the shaft once again. And of course, we have the SEC-loving media spinmeisters launching their campaign to ensure that, should no SEC team survive their season unscathed, a one-loss SEC champion would still get a spot BCS championship game, no matter what any school in any other conference does.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you. I am a Big Ten guy. As I disclose right over there on my bio, I grew up in Ohio. I went to Penn State. My love for college football was built on my experiences growing up in Big Ten country.

That being said, I feel I am capable of analyzing college football without bias.

Unfortunately, I am not sure many other writers and poll voters around the country can say the same.

I am looking at you, Tom Deinhart. And you, Dennis Dodd. And you, Bryan Burwell.

There is a very disturbing trend emerging in college football this season, a trend epitomized by those guys I just listed. That trend is this: Pundits, pollsters and writers are operating under the assumption that the SEC-leading Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide are championship-quality teams specifically because the 2006 Gators and the 2007 LSU Tigers won the national title. And they assume Penn State of the Big Ten, the current target of their disdain, is not a championship-quality team, specifically because the 2006 and 2007 Ohio State Buckeyes didn't.

Which, of course, makes absolutely no sense. It is, frankly, illogical.

Because if you’re going to judge the 2008 Nittany Lions through the lens of the 2007 Buckeyes, you should also judge the 2008 Texas Longhorns through the lens of the 2007 Oklahoma Sooners—the Big 12 champ that got smoked by Big East champ West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl. Right? No, of course not.

Read enough of what these guys—and others—write and you’ll hear a lot of the same arguments, without a whole lot of evidence to back those arguments up. You’ll hear that Penn State from the Big Ten cannot compete with Georgia and Florida from the SEC, or Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12. You’ll hear that a one-loss USC team is better than an undefeated Big Ten team. You'll hear that no Big Ten deserves another shot at the title—not after what happened in 2006 and 2007.

What you won’t hear, of course is the following: That Georgia got blown out at home in its biggest game of the year and, before last week's win over LSU, wasn't exactly tearing through its schedule; that this tremendous Florida team lost, at home, to an average-at-best Ole Miss team; that mighty USC lost to an Oregon State team that Penn State beat by 31.

You won’t hear that the computers say Alabama’s schedule is only slightly tougher than Penn State’s.

You won't hear that Penn State and Georgia have beaten precisely the same number of ranked teams: Two. As for Florida? Well, they've beaten one. You also won’t hear that never in the history of the BCS has a one-loss BCS conference team jumped an undefeated BCS conference team for a spot in the BCS championship game. You won’t hear any of these things, because these guys have already made up their minds—facts and reality aside, they believe the Big Ten isn’t any good. They want everyone else to believe the same.

But here, really, is the danger of their argument: If we're going to go ahead and decide that the results on the field no longer matter—if we're going to tell an undefeated team from one conference that everything they accomplished is not as impressive as what was accomplished by a one-loss team from another conference—then you may as well not play the games at all. Because if we're going to judge teams based on perception, why even continue the farce of the BCS—a system that was allegedly supposed to let the championship be won, or lost, on the field?

What these campaigners are trying to do is, basically, rig college football. They don’t want to see the game that the system says we should have. They don’t want to see the game that fairness dictates we should have.

They want to see the game they want to have.

The sad part is, they might get away with it.

So deep is the animosity in the South (and, to be fair, elsewhere) toward the Big Ten these days that it was said even before the season began that a one-loss Big Ten team would have an awful hard time getting a bid in the BCS Championship game.

And maybe that would have been fair. Because you know what? Once a team loses, they also lose the right to complain.

Unless, of course, that team plays in the SEC.

Then they get the benefit of the doubt.

Photo: What does the the 2007 national championship game have to do with the 2008 season? Answer: Absolutely nothing. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)