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[thesportstruth-blog]

Defending the Buckeyes AND the SEC

Look, the SEC is not overrated, the Big Ten is not underrated, and Ohio State is improperly labeled a “Big Ten team” by SEC fans just because it plays in the…Big Ten.

I grew up in Columbus Ohio. Although they’ve never been the sports team most important to me, I was inevitably infected by the contagion that is Buckeye football. In the ‘90s until around 2004, the Big Ten was powerful and loaded with talent. Some of those years it was the nation's best conference, but the era wasn’t comparable to the string of uninterrupted dominance the SEC has enjoyed the last decade. 

Through family ties I'd always rooted for Kentucky basketball. After going to Lexington for college, I acquired a number of very close friends who grew up watching mostly SEC football teams. They were all very aware of the SEC’s recent run of dominance, but perhaps not how recent it was. They easily accepted the notion that football in the SEC is inherently superior to football in the Big Ten. And although they were right about the conferences as a whole, they didn’t realize that there were tangible reasons why the SEC had become so dominant. It wasn’t inherent, of course. SEC teams were doing things that, if replicated by other teams, would produce the same results. 

Then something happened late in 2011 that has gone over-looked or bitterly buried and ignored by SEC fans.

On November 28, 2011, Ohio State hired Urban Meyer. 

Urban Meyer is the man who coached the best team in the best conference in the country from 2005 through 2010. He won two national titles, thoroughly pounding the favored, undefeated Buckeyes in the first bout, and winning a hard-fought game against the DeMarco Murray-less Oklahoma Sooners in the second. He groomed the greatest college football player of all time. Hell, he brought the now popular spread offense to the SEC! One could argue he catalyzed the rise of the conference from good to dominant with his arrival, and cemented the public shift in perspective with that win over Ohio State. 

He is an elite recruiter and an elite in-game coach. I'd rank him behind only Nick Saban as the most coveted name in all of college football.

Now at Ohio State, Meyer has done exactly what he did at Florida: recruited. When the best players play for the best coaches it always results in winning. Since arriving at Ohio State, Urban has never landed a recruiting class ranked any lower than #7 in the country according to ESPN. So he's bringing in elite talent and instead of the outdated "ground and pound" style the Big Ten is known for, he's implemented his signature spread offense. In every way, Ohio State is just like an SEC team, except that they play against less talented players on a weekly basis than SEC teams. That’s relevant, but playing weaker competition doesn’t necessarily make a great team any weaker itself.

Friends I met at Kentucky react with shock when I suggest Ohio State could be the country's best team next season in 2015. "Greg, how can they beat an SEC team? They play in the lowly Big Ten." What they're missing is that Ohio State is as SEC as it gets from its coach to its players. Despite this feeling that football is somehow inherently better in the South, the real reason the SEC is so good is very clear and tangible: recruiting. Other than Alabama, I don't see a team in the SEC more poised for success over the next three or four years than the Buckeyes. As I said before, the biggest reason is recruiting.

That same point is something my fellow Ohioans need to absorb before the next time they try to defend the competition Ohio State faces in conference. Recruiting. Let’s take a look at the last five recruiting classes including the currently incomplete class of 2015 which is obviously made up of current high school commits. In 2015 so far, the SEC has 10 teams with top 25 recruiting classes. The Big Ten has three. In 2014, the SEC had 10 teams with top 25 recruiting classes. The Big Ten had three. In 2013, the SEC had 10 teams with top 25 recruiting classes. The Big Ten had four. In 2012 the SEC had eight teams with top 25 recruiting classes. The Big Ten had three. In 2011 the SEC had nine teams with top 25 recruiting classes. The Big Ten had two. This according to ESPN. Check it out.

These recruiting classes now make up all the players currently playing football in the two conferences. Some highly ranked players have certainly disappointed and some low ranked players surely turned out to be underrated in high school, so each team’s recruiting rankings will not match up directly with their actual performance. However, there is no reason to believe there were significantly more underrated or overrated players in one conference or the other. No, the disparity is too massive and too consistent across these five classes for a logical person to draw any conclusion other than that the SEC has way more talent than the Big Ten.

All over Facebook I read desperate cries from Buckeye fans who are sick of being belittled by SEC fans simply because they play in the Big Ten. They point out that on one Saturday this year, lowly Indiana defeated SEC East Division Champion, Missouri, in Missouri! The Buckeyes defeated that same Indiana team by a wide margin this season, they argue. That’s true. But Missouri is not Ohio State. And the Indiana team that beat Missouri was far better than the one that fell to Ohio State. Two quarterback injuries are impossible to overcome for a team without the impressive depth of the Buckeyes. Regardless, none of that even matters. It was one day. If Missouri played Indiana 10 times, they’d almost certainly win more than five of those games.

I read wild conspiracy theories like the one that since the SEC simply gets to start the season with more ranked teams, all of their wins are automatically more impressive and all their losses automatically more forgivable. There should be no preseason rankings, they say. They’re based on nothing. Wrong. They’re based on talent. And the SEC has so much more talent than the Big Ten it’s ridiculous.

What Ohio State fans need to concentrate on is that their team is an SEC team. If they played in that conference they’d even be a good SEC team. I’d say the second best SEC team, evening winning the conference occasionally once every four or five years. They have the second best coach in the country running a lethal spread offense he used to propel the SEC to national prominence, and they have as much talent as anyone other than Alabama. These are the arguments Buckeye fans should be making to SEC fans who tell them their team stinks because it happens to be in a conference with mostly teams that stink.

SEC fans, understand that your narrative, “Everything SEC is better than everything Big Ten”, is oversimplified and inaccurate. Ohio State fans, let go of sticking up for your conference opponents and just stick up for your team.

Although, with Jim Harbaugh coming to Michigan, it certainly bodes well for the Wolverines and the conference as a whole. Perhaps the Big Ten will now boast two of the three best recruiters in college football. There's also the consistent good-not-great Badgers, the very good-not-elite Michigan State, and perhaps the promise of James Franklin's impressive recruiting ability to suggest the Big Ten is at least trending up. The past and present are very clear. The future could get interesting. 

[chibuckeye]

Am I really a fan of the Big Ten or SEC?

As you may recall I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, home to THE Ohio State University Buckeyes. Everyone in Columbus is an OSU fan, it’s ingrained in you from the day you are born, I’m sure it’s some kind of city statute that you must be an OSU fan in order to live there. Growing up an OSU fan during the 1980s-2000s there were some ups and downs. The Cooper years were kinda rough, lot of ups and downs but there were some great teams and great players during those years, not only for OSU but all around the Big Ten. The Tressel years were great, of course the highlight was the 2002 National Championship, his departure not so great but he will always be remembered for that undefeated season capped by the championship. So you get the idea, I grew up a big fan of OSU.

As I’ve become more of an avid football fan over the years I’ve spent much of my free time watching sports shows on tv and listening to sports shows on the radio. My one hour + (each way) commute gives me plenty of time to listen to ESPN radio. One of my favorite afternoon shows was Coach and Company, the guests were great, topics were fun, it made my commute at least tolerable. Jonathan Coachman (Coach) got promoted so no more afternoon show, that slot was replaced by The Dan Lebatard Show. Now, I’m not a huge fan of Dan Lebatard but he can be mildly entertaining when he wants to so I gave it a chance, that lasted all of 2 days. I couldn’t stand his show, so I tried ESPN Xtra where they were playing The Paul Finebaum show, this was worse. I’d seen Paul Finebaum a few times on College Gameday and I knew of his show from the whole Harvey Updyke incident but that was all I knew of him. When I first started listening to his show I thought it was terrible, he was dry, the show was slow moving, it was just him and the callers. Of course he had all of his regular callers calling in, they talked about inside jokes and old stories about which I had no idea. I tried to go back and give Lebatard another chance but all they talked about was the Miami Heat and the NBA, there was no way I could listen to that for an hour and a half, so I gave Finebaum another chance.

At some point something just clicked with the Finebaum show, I began to catch more of the regular callers, I learned who they were, who they had beef with, which teams they rooted for, and even Paul grew on me. Now I can’t get enough of the show and being on tv makes it even better, to get to see pictures of the callers while they’re ranting is priceless. The only problem with the show is that they mostly talk about SEC football, there is the occasional caller from outside the southeast like Matt from Cincinnati or Jeff from Chicago but for the most part it’s an SEC show. What’s the problem you say? Well I’m a Big Ten girl, I don’t care about the SEC, or maybe I do care a little bit? As a college football fan, I can’t deny how good the SEC is, they’re just that good. Plus how can you not love a coach who eats grass before and sometimes during the games. Given how down the Big Ten has been lately (at least according to the analysts), I am usually more excited to watch the SEC games, especially this year with the new playoff system. Besides just being a college football fan in general, I do have some connections to the SEC by way of Ohio and the Big Ten. The current coach of Tennessee, Butch Jones, came from University of Cincinnati where I spent 5 years, not to mention I’m obsessed with the phrase “Butchplease” which was coined earlier this year. The current coach of Arkansas, Brett Bielema, came from Wisconsin, coached my favorite NFL player Russell Wilson, and married his wife in vegas, what’s better than that?? So for the past year and a half I have been entrenched in SEC football and have definitely watched more SEC games than Big Ten games start-to-finish this year, does this mean I am now an SEC fan?  

I’m not sure I would go as far as saying I am a fan of the SEC, but I do enjoy watching their games, listening to and watching a radio show that talks about their conference for four hours a day, I find their fans to be fascinating and highly entertaining. Every day I look forward to hearing a passionate rant from Phyllis, admonishing various analysts for underestimating ‘Bama or to hearing a corny one-liner and at least 1-2 name drops from Darriel (incidentally from Columbus...Georgia). If you see me wearing my #Butchplease or Pawl So Hard t-shirt just know my heart is saying “go Bucks”.