The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Arguing about the current relative quality of the two conferences is admittedly kind of silly.

What's more interesting, will be watching to see if the financial gap between the B12 TV contracts and the ACC TV contracts over the next decade, result in any increase in the quality of outcomes for B12 teams with respect to ACC teams.

As I've pointed out before, one of the primary things that has FSU all hot and bothered, is that Central Florida is going to be making more money than the Noles.  More money than the Canes, too.  Who would have thought THAT was possible a decade ago, or even 5 years back???

I hope Oregon and Washington got discounted rates

Arguing about the current relative quality of the two conferences is admittedly kind of silly.

The list of items that garner a lot of interest in CFB that really are kind of silly is long.

I'm expecting the Big 12 to play really exciting, competitive ball. Really, too competitive.

When there was a "big hitter" in the league, like (sometimes) Texas or OU or Nebraska, one of those other teams could win their way up the chain by beating a (usually over-ranked) high rank team. Unless Utah continues or TCU has more than what I think they do, this is a league tailor made for beating each other up year after year.

Yup.  

It's actually been advantageous for the SEC and the B1G to be fairly top-heavy over the years. Keeps a couple of teams "clean" at the top while giving all the other teams just enough juice to prop up the top guys.  Works even better when you're only playing 8 conference games instead of 9, replacing those missing conference games with FCS cupcakes, and therefore cutting the number of guaranteed total conference losses by as much as 7 per season.

The B12 has pretty much been the opposite for most of its existence.  Outside of a couple or three years  when OU or Texas or Nebraska were simply the dominant team in the conference, it's really beat itself up and caused a lot of damage to its perception over the years.

SEC programs have some historical props that helps a lot, "near blue bloods" who do really well often enough to remain someone notable, Auburn, Tennessee, LSU, UGA, Florida, they all sound like worthy programs, even if they are 8-4.  It yields a ranking boost for them I think.

Yup, and 8-4 looks better to the voters at season's end, and they never remember that 8th win was against Tennessee Chattanooga and if there'd been 9 conference games, that record might have been 7-5, which all of a sudden sounds less near-blue-bloody.

It's not against the rules and it has been quite effective. 

Well, the 9 conference game thing is not much different from playing 8 and 1 decent opponent and 3 pastries, if the 9 still has 3 pastries.

Maybe you add Vandy and drop say FSU ...

Maybe you drop Tennessee Chattanooga and add a not-great but still-dangerous 4-7 Texas A&M team?  That's precisely the danger of playing an added conference game and being forced into one more game against the middle of your conference.

It's also a guaranteed 7 losses within your 14-team conference, rather than a likely conference clean-sweep against the FCS on the SEC's annual cupcake weekend.

guaranteed 7 losses effects overall SOS

Yup.  It also affects the way poll voters cast their ballots.