COLUMN: BCS needs to look past the SEC

This is a sentiment that has been repeated by many columnists before me and will probably be by many others well into the future: the BCS (EC) has screwed up again.

But this year, they’ve reached an almost cartoonish level of super-villainy. They’ve decided the most “exciting and competitive matchup,” to quote their mission statement, they could create in the National “Championship” was a replay of contest already decided earlier this year.

The Alabama-LSU game is the first time I can honestly say a football game put me to sleep. The game ended 9-6 in OT in favor of LSU because the Alabama kicker’s spot-on, game-long impression of Scott Norwood from Super Bowl XXV.

It’s SEC-palooza all right, but has anyone considered maybe the SEC isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

Don’t get me wrong, some great players, coaches and stories have come out of this conference. But all these ghosts of the past seem to have created quite the inflated ego throughout the BCS era. The conference is essentially handed a spot in the “championship” game every year because every pollster thinks the league is the greatest thing to happen to happen to football since the introduction of the forward pass.

And yet, they’re unable to stack up offensively against the competition. ESPN’s Edward Aschoff wrote in November that SEC schools averaged 28.2 points per game versus the national average of 28.9 points. This also placed the conference in 8th place overall.

The talent discrepancies between certain teams are no less staggering than any other conference. Arkansas’ 49-7 shellacking of Tennessee or LSU’s 52-3 demolition of Ole Miss did very little to convince me that this is the most well-rounded conference in the nation.

You want to prove you’re the greatest conference? Earn your way to a title rather than having the opportunity handed to you on a silver platter.