No matter the topic, fans make it a conference debate

There were no shortage of opinions on what Ray Rice and Rutgers' stiff-arming of South Florida said about the Big East. AP

MAILBAG Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Last Thursday, I wrote a column from that night's USF-Rutgers game predicting the then second-ranked Bulls would likely be treated less mercifully by the voters and public following their loss than would a similar result in another conference. The general point was summed up in this passage:

"Such is the still fragile state of the rebuilt Big East. When Kentucky beats LSU, it's written off as a near-inevitability in the rough-and-tumble SEC. When Rutgers beats USF -- just a couple weeks after losing to then-undefeated Cincinnati, which itself turned around and lost to Louisville -- it's an indictment against both program and conference."

I received about 200 e-mails about that column, of which I'd estimate about 80 percent expressed vehement disagreement -- which was somewhat remarkable, considering many of these people were in direct disagreement with each other.

Stewart, usually you're pretty even-handed about conferences, but this is getting a little silly. To implicitly argue that the SEC and Big East are fundamentally equal is just plain wrong. If I didn't know better, I would have thought the Big East commissioner himself wrote this article.
--Hugh O'Connor, Chicago

Stewart: Why is it that you focus upon "discrediting" the in-league play within the Big East? Is a USF loss the sole reason to question the validity of the Big East and/or the competitiveness of in-league play? I think your article is overly critical of what the Big East has accomplished.
--Tony, Providence, R.I.

So let's review. Two people (and believe me, they were hardly the only two to express each position) both read the same column; one took away from it that I was defending the Big East while the other assumed I was belittling it.

I bring this up because, as I'm reminded literally every time I check my e-mail or read my blog comments, the nation's college football fans have become obsessed with this never-ending debate over whose conference is better than whose. Honestly, folks -- we've reached the point of absurdity.

Scroll through some of my blog comments. Pick a topic, any topic. You'll find some sort of conference debate on there. It doesn't even have to be related to the story. Last week, for instance, I wrote about Nebraska AD Steve Pederson's firing, which at first elicited the expected responses. When I came back to it a few hours later, some guy had randomly popped off about Ohio State's schedule.

Were I to write about some third-string linebacker at South Carolina who spends his summers saving starving children in Somalia, a reader would invariably write in complaining about my "trumping up the SEC" again. And then someone else would point out a similarly noble humanitarian on Stanford's roster and accuse me of "hating Pac-10 football."

I'm not joking.

Mind you, this whole thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. While people used to complain about certain teams' soft non-conference schedules (Kansas State, Virginia Tech, etc.), I really don't remember reading any 12-page manifestos championing the Big Ten over the Big 12 or the SEC over the Pac-10. These days, however, some fans get as worked up about defending their favorite conference's honor as they do cheering on their favorite team.

It seems to me this can be traced back to Auburn's 2004 exclusion from the BCS championship. While there were certainly BCS controversies before that one, I rarely remember conference affiliation entering the equation. But when this happened, fans of not only Auburn, but also the entire SEC, were indignant. To them, this wasn't just about an undefeated team being deprived an opportunity at the title; this was about an SEC team getting shafted.

And so, over the two years that followed, SEC coaches and fans alike took every opportunity to make sure such an injustice wouldn't happen again, beating it into the rest of the country's brains just how much tougher their conference was than everybody else's. This of course only intensified after Florida demolished season-long media darling Ohio State last January -- which in turn has caused backlash against the SEC from fans in the rest of the country.

All over a topic for which -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.

Basically, we've managed to turn the great college-conference debate into a de facto brand of politics. Just as argumentative Republicans and Democrats are capable of spinning virtually any set of facts about an issue or event in their favor, an SEC fan and a Pac-10 fan can just as easily spin a set of football results one way or the other.

For instance, the SEC fan likely views Vanderbilt's upset of No. 6 South Carolina last week as further evidence of its conference's unmatched depth. The Pac-10 fan, however, might look at the same score as proof that South Carolina was overrated. The SEC fan might mock the fact that UCLA, a team that lost badly to Utah and Notre Dame, is currently tied for first in that conference. The Pac-10 fan might respond that Tennessee (which lost to current fifth-place Pac-10 team Cal) and Alabama (which lost to a mediocre Florida State team) are currently tied for the lead in the SEC's two divisions.

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