quote:
Who gives a crap about "looking better?"

You either win or you don't.

Bottom-line.

Iowa, TCU, Stanford, etc would not have had a problem of making the playoff if they took care of business.

Do you think people sit around saying "LSU looks a lot better after losing because Alabama beat Michigan State."

You think the general public gives a shite about this stuff.

No, they care that Alabama won.

You didn't win, the SEC didn't win and your next door neighbor didn't win shite either.

Oh look, another idiot who doesn't get it.

You know who cares about "looking better"? Voters. The people making the rankings. Having a loss to an SEC team is a lot better than having a loss to teams from another conference. It doesn't count against you as much.

And winning against SEC teams is a boost that another conference doesn't get.

Having a very strong conference boosts your wins against conference opponents and softens the losses against conference opponents.

And it's not just some kind of false perception that the SEC was stronger than all other conferences the past decade or so. It was proven in their out of conference records. And often times, it was a higher-seeded team from another conference losing to a lower-seeded team in the SEC.

For example... two similarly-ranked teams might play each other from the Big 10 and SEC. However, that team in the Big 10 might be their #3 ranked team in their conference, and they are playing the SEC's 6th best team. Yet they are comparable teams, and the SEC team often wins.

Because the SEC is strong, to get a competitive match-up in a bowl game, they have to match up a #3 Big 10 team with a #6 SEC team in the bowl game.

If you went ranking by ranking:

SEC #1 vs. Big 10 #1
SEC #2 vs. Big 10 #2

Etc...

The SEC would be the best conference without a doubt when ranking tit for tat like that.

They've had a few down years recently, but the SEC being the best conference in college football was not even a question for the past decade or longer.

This post was edited on 1/2/16 at 2:09 pm