Well, the SEC was not up to scratch this year. Consider that the leader of the SEC East would have finished roughly fifth in the West, and you see how imbalanced the league was. Not one team in twelve was able to field an offense AND a defense that were both up to SEC competition standard. In a way, Auburn is a throwback to eighty or ninety years ago – vagabond tailback shows up for one year and runs the single-wing to a championship. In a normal SEC, a team built around one player – running, in essence, a high school offense, “just put the best athlete under center and let him handle the ball every down, and hope for the best” – would finish 8-4 at best. (And considering the near escapes against South Carolina and Alabama – not to mention the complete lack of credible defense – you have to think that given ten chances to repeat, Auburn couldn’t deliver an undefeated season again.)
But.
Oregon is the closest thing to an NFL team out there – the bottomless money from Phil Knight has put them on a different level from anyone in sports. Their defense is slightly better, but their high-speed no-huddle spread option was very nearly shut down by a 5-7 Cal defense. (And spare me the caterwauling about “faking injuries” – if one guy taking one flop is enough to shut down your offense, your offense sucks.)
There shouldn’t be a championship this year. The SEC was the worst it’s been in a decade or more, and the Pac-10 was if anything worse. The only title the winner tonight deserves is “least godawful team of 2010 and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”