The SEC Myth

that is the most obvious reason for the short-term success. i believe this is a more recent phenomenon; say in the past decade.

I have been trying to have this argument with my buddy but didn't have the time to sit down and put together the data. Thanks for this.

It still doesn't make putting up with these bastards in the meantime any easier, but nice to see a well thought out reason as to why this crap has a good reason to go away.

What about simply that it's easier to prepare for a bowl all of December when you're practicing in the sun rather than the snow? It really is the wrong time to judge parity between the big ten and the sec or Florida/Miami/USC.

They all practice where they can do full practices without any hindrances. We've just now built a full indoor field. But it wasn't that way and isn't at other schools. And thus the warm weather schools are ranked pre-season based on previous bowl succes and the situation perpetuates itself.

The system of comparison is flawed...

I think that the sec has been so good partly in terms of player development especially because of late because of player development and its because the sec doesnt just pay head coaches the big money but they go out and get great coordinators/assistants and they pay them too.  I mean shit GMatt is making $750k a year and thats unheard of in the B1G, even tSIO is getting the picture and is going to pay big money to get the best assistants they can buy.

and get to the NC game (LSU & Bama). Without the advantage of curtting 20% of your worst players, they would just be average.

That's why the SEC will never ban it, although I don't understand why every other conference lets them get away with it.

Oversigining is the most recent and blatantly obvious factor to the SEC's recent sucess. It takes out some of the risk to recruting a bust.  If you have a bust, then just oversign and fill in with the next 5/4 star player.

Add in the fact that the best team in the ACC over the past 10 years has been Va Tech, then you see that it opens up so many more recruiting trails that were not there before.  Plus, it lowers the level of competition in the SEC home states.

Not ESS EEE SEE speed.

#3 is big. When you hire a great coach, you're going to get players, but you're also going to get some good young coaches too. Coaches from around the country are going to want to coach under these guys because doing well will enable them to move up to new opportunities. There's a lot of incentive to do well and they're going to be more energetic on the recruiting trail as a result. It's a trickle down effect. 

Good analysis. However, oversigning is still rampant and until there are specific, enforced rules by the NCAA, the oversigning will continue. 

Also, the SEC has a greater population close to their schools which is an advantage for recruiting and they have bowl games close to home. The advantages in priority would be:

1.     Coaching

2.     Recruiting/ Decline of the ACC

3.     Oversigning

4.     Population

5.     Bowl games at home

6.     Warm weather

I’m surprised that USC has not done better over the past decade because they have much of the same advantages.

Your conclusion that Michigan and the BIG10 should be able to make inroads into the decline of the ACC and Big 12 is interesting. If Michigan could recruit in Texas, Florida as well as the California and the Midwest, that could be a significant advantage for us. 

the SEC has seen in the last decade all came from the midwest and Big Ten programs at some point.

Nick Saban, Les Miles and Urban Meyer all spent time in the Big Ten or a midwest program.  This is not a coincidence.

Good job with your outline of topics.

One item that was not discussed, and I question its relevance based upon the lack of hard data, is admission standards.  I remember a few years ago when someone published SAT data and, you guessed it, several of the schools at the bottom of the list were SEC schools, (and little brothe)r.

Oversigning has to make a difference.  Imagine being able to filter out four or five kids from every class and still have 85 scholarships players on your program. 

One point not discussed is the depth of very good teams in the SEC and the lack thereof in the B1G.  It seems that often there are at least  five or six very good teams in the SEC, compared to two or three in the B1G.  The addition of Nebraska should help somewhat as will the resurgence of Michigan.  Whether Wiscy's last few years of being solid is a long term trend and where PSU will be with their little shop of horrors is still to be decided.

don't follow your conclusion. How are conditions going to change? The south will always have warmer weather and, therefore, better conditioned atheletes. SEC schools will always pay for top coaches because most of those schools have rabid fanbases and bring in a ton of revenue. College football is the ONLY sport in many of these states.  

I suppose the SEC, or even NCAA, might crack down on oversigning one day, but the effect of having 4-5 extra recruits a year is minimal, IMO. Oversiging sucks, but I believe it is used as a crutch by haters. The top SEC schools gets 4- and 5-star athletes by the boatload - if oversigning stops, they'll just be more selective about who they offer.

You could make a strong case that the only thing that ever held the SEC back was institutional racism that existed into the 60s & 70s. Once recruiting opened up, it was only a matter of time before they started to dominate. I think the only way other conferences can compete on a regular basis is to outscheme them. Teams like Iowa and Minnesota can never expect to bring in the talent that Bama, Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi et al get on a regular basis.

All IMO, of course.  

#BeatBama

Regarding the "migrations" stuff, I think you're kind of on the right track but missing the elephant in the room: the South has the largest African-American population in the country, and most elite football recruits are black.  It really shouldn't be a surprise that, given a deeper recruiting talent pool to draw from, the SEC schools have more talented rosters.  But this is of course a relatively recent phenomenon, because the league was all-white until the 1970s, and it probably took some time even after that for the schools to overcome their racist reputation in the minds of recruits.  At this point, though, that's out the window, and most kids in the South (regardless of race) now want to play for SEC schools.

It's worth mention that there's no way Boise State would be ranked right now if TCU and Georgia weren't ranked in the preseason.  I think the preseason ranking carryover bias has helped the SEC image a good deal.  You can't look at the top-to-bottom resume this year and tell me that they are a deep football conference. 

Until the SEC stops winning the BCS Championship almost every year, the use of the word "myth" just sounds like RCMB-style sour grapes.

Zone Left mentioned this in regards to oversigning, but over the last five years, the SEC has certainly dominated - and itself been dominated by the SEC West schools (not from Mississippi). Auburn, Bama and LSU have all won a title, and Florida won two. Florida's in one of the most populous states in the country, and has seen its two biggest in-state rivals fall asleep for the last decade - and it STILL has hit a rut over the last two years. Georgia hasn't been good since, what, 2007? Tennessee just celebrated a win over Vanderbilt like we did ours over Ohio. The three blue-blooded programs of the SEC East have hit hard times - and so the West hasn't just gotten the good fortune of seeing the ACC fall, they've also seen the SEC East fall too. That, I believe, is a short term thing.

One other thing regarding recruiting - I firmly believe that one reason Michigan dishes out less football recruits than Ohio and Pennsylvania is because of hockey. It's such a part of Michigan's culture, so a lot of the best athletes play it. And at a high level playing hockey means you're not playing anything else. The sport isn't as popular in similarly populated states of the Midwest (Illinois, Ohio, PA) and so those states have more football recruits. While I don't think that winter sports account for as much disparity between the North and South in general, I certainly think hockey hurts Michigan in football recruits.

But obviously not enough. we BEAT OHIO!

I think it's funny to say down here in Florida where I live that the ENTIRE state of Florida is IRRELEVENT in the landscape of college football this year, with the exception of FSU barely cracking the top 25 in the AP poll as of last week. It burns them to hear that. NO Florida team shows up in the BCS Standings. SEC has 2 DOMINANT teams & one or 2 good teams (UGA & ARK). Really, the rest is garbage.

You can say this almost every year too. Sure, the SEC has produced the National Champion every year the past 5-6 yrs, but they are top heavy. You CANNOT tell me that teams like Vandy or Tenn or even Florida this year are bad because of the "RIGORS OF THE SEC" as they so often throw that phrase out. Fact is those teams just SUCK & they would suck in ANY conference you put them in. 

LSU & ALA are WAY beyond anything any other conference could throw out there, but aside from that, the rest of that conference would NOT finish above UM, OSU, Wisky or MSU in the Big10 & probably fair the same if not worse in the Pac12. 

SOOOO Sick of hearing how EVERY team down there would win in any conference & the reason a team goes 3-9 is because the "COMPETITION IS SO FIERCE IN THE SOUTH"

That, my friend, is BS.

Another conclusion I drew from this was that the Big Ten has sucked in the national picture for about 21 years.

There was an SI or ESPN article on this not long ago...

The proposition is, a team dominates in football when its defensive line dominates -- if a team can get superior pass rushing with just 4 down guys, the defense will be exceptionally hard to defeat.

Looking at the NFL, the southern states have a disproportionate share of DE's and DT's in the NFL, compared to population.  Lots of DE/DT from FL and GA (and NJ and PA actually); not so much Vermont etc.

Now, oddly... the states with the disproportionate share of DT/DE in the NFL just about matches each state's percentage of overweight population compared to average.

Yes, it's remarkable but:  Southern states (and NJ, and PA) have too many fat people; so kids who are athletic and can handle the extra weight are more likely to end up as killer DE's and DT's.

Hence, SEC rules.

Wild theory.  Statistics can prove anything?

What you fail to realize, is that not all 4 or 5 star recruits pan out. If BWC had gone to Alabama that dude would have been med. redshirted by now and replaced with another high-rated prospect that actually DID play up to his recruiting ranking. It's recruiting without any risk, with all the reward. 

If you were the boss of your own company and you had 4 open positions, you're telling me that there would not be a HUGE advantage to hire 5 people then kickout the one that did the worst? You could easily go out and get the 4 best prospects(4 and 5* recruits) and then take a chance on someone with a lot of talent but doesn't have the grades (i.e. 3* with 4.3 speed but only played high school ball for a year). One of the "best" applicants is now pregant and doesn't want to work as hard (lazy, out of shape 5* du jour) and the borderline applicant outperformed everyone and you keep him and axe the preggers. You now have 4 extremely well qualified employees. Had you only hired the "top" 4,  You would now have 3 qualified employees and you had to settle for a college intern that while works hard isn't necessarily the same quality of the others (Walk-ons and freshmen starters at any position). 

You compound oversigning with almost no academic standards to speak of, you have almost no risk recruiting players who will get "incompletes" in a semester (guess who?). So you're almost guarateeing you won't have any attrition due to grades. An you'll always have 85  players capable of making plays for you, at all times. Which is a HUGE advantage when you consider our own depth issues which could have derailed our season had any number of linemen on both sides of the ball missed any stretches of time. 

people get offended because players don't get paid sometimes, well nick saban, les miles, and other SEC coaches just use those players and ditch them when they aren't productive enough for strictly their own gain. It's pretty disgusting actually and the fact that Saban gets so offended whenever anyone brings it up to him makes me just want to hit him

I meant to read this earlier and just missed it, but good job.  I really like hte breakdown. 

With respect to the bowl wins, my argument has always been that teams in the South and West play bowl games right in their backyard (or at least close enough), meaning they have less travel, are less displaced, more acclimated to the conditions, etc.  These might all be minor advantages, but when you consider most football games between equal-talent tend to be decided by close margins, these are undoubtedly factors in that winning percentage.  I mean, LSU was able to play Ohio in New Orleans, which is a heck of a lot closer to Baton Rouge than Columbus.  That stadium was far more pro-Tigers than pro-Buckeyes, and I'm sure it was difficult for Ohio to get the plays off, adjust, etc. with a defeaning crowd behind them in a dome in the south.  Same with those USC teams in the mid-00's - they never traveled farther east than Arizona (I believe), and yet teams like UM had to travel cross-country to play them in their home stadium. 

I do think oversigning is a major short-term reason, but I also don't see that changing any time soon - the schools will talk about changing the practice, but the NCAA is the only organization with the power to make the playing field level, and when was the last time they did anything constructive and controversial like that?