A few things I gotta weigh in on:
A. To all those people saying "This team from conference A would do so much better in conference B," or "This team from conference C would get dominated playing in conference D," stop. You honestly have no idea how a team would do if it was moved from one conference to another. All you can do is make assumptions, and we know what they say about those who assume...
B. What's a better way of judging a football conference? Is it how many NFL products it churns out, or how it's conference champion performs against another BCS conference champion, or at worst, runner-up? The former is a better way of judging how NFL scouts perceive the talent of a conference's players, while the latter is not based off of speculation, but rather how the best team from one conference, does against the best team from another, taking into account not only the talent of the players, but also the ability of the coaches.
My personal opinion? BCS bowl records mean a lot more than how many players a conference sends to the NFL, because it reflects on the quality of the TEAMS, not the indivdual players. Saying "we sent x number of players to the NFL" is just a nice little stat to put in a media guide. It doesn't show how each team in each conference does against the competition on the actual football field.
The fact is, in the last three years, the Big East champion has prevailed in their BCS bowl. The current version of the Big East has only been together three years, and already it has equalled the BCS win total (Read: Miami's BCS win total) of the previous seven years. Try and tell me the conference hasn't made strides, or doesn't deserve an auto bid to a BCS bowl.
Another fact is that since the BCS was first formed 10 seasons ago, the ACC champion has only won once. Their champion has only beaten another BCS conference champion once. Out of ten tries. That's not a dig on the ACC. That's a cold hard fact.
And yet somehow, the ACC gets a free pass and the Big East is continuously questioned. Why is that? I'd love to hear somebody's explanation for this.
C. The SEC is the best conference in college football. Do some SEC schools play weak non-con schedules? Yes. Do most schools in all the other BCS conferences do the same? Also yes. Can another BCS conference say that thier intraconference schedule is as tough as that of the SEC? No. Believe me, any SEC champion has earned it and the trip to Miami, New Orleans or Glendale that comes with it, regardless of who they played in early September. The rest of the year more than makes up for it.
/rant
