Am I correct that the "best conference" claims got started with the Internet and ESPN?
I vaguely recall comments by TV guys during games that "X" was the best conference in 1970, but I don't think it aroused much controversy, perhaps because people had no outlet for their thoughts. I know when teams from the Big 8 finished 1-2-3 it was sort of obvious, but I suspect in many years it really was not very clear.
And it of course requires some idea of how one decides it, e.g., a conference might have 2-3 GREAT teams and 10-11 bad teams versus another that has 1 great team, 5 good teams, 5 OK teams, and 3 bad teams etc.
One can't logically just tote up the OOC records because you can have a top team from A playing a crap team from B, AND because there are so few OOC games of any real note. Then you have UGA beating ND by a point in a game that could go either way. Should we presume UGA was really better than ND? Eh. NW beat UK in a game that could have gone either way, same with LSU and ND. UGA beat OU in another contest.
So, eh, I'm happy for anyone to claim X is the best conference based on Y. Fine with me. I'm happy my Dawgs won the SEC which for me is the one real claim to a something in CFB. Win your conference first.