SEC makes its case for being No. 1

Let the rest of the country brag about its ivy-covered traditions and its cultural superiority. Down in Dixie, it's all about trotting out the nation's top college football teams on any given Saturday.

We're talking Southeastern Conference, which long ago proclaimed itself the best in the land. End of discussion.

It's a glory road of the gridiron that starts in Florida, winds its way up through Georgia and Tennessee, then curves back into Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, an unrivaled path of pigskin prestige.

Since the powers that run college football created the Bowl Championship Series a decade ago, SEC teams have won the national title four times. No other conference has won more than twice.

Florida could make it five national titles — and three in a row — when the Gators meet the Big 12's Oklahoma in the BCS championship game Thursday night.

Given its long-standing success, it's easy to see why the SEC has become the league everyone else loves to hate. These guys don't mind tooting their own horn, either, which only adds to the hard feelings emanating from the rest of the country.

"They have a golden spoon in their mouth," said Glenn Rhea, a 33-year-old fan and graduate of Big 12 school Texas Tech. "They always think they're better than everybody else."

And why not?

The last conference to take three straight Associated Press titles? That would be the SEC, which did it some three decades ago with Alabama (1978-79) and Georgia (1980).

In this updated version of the Civil War, the Big 12 is just an annoyance (granted, they did have four pretty good teams this year), the Big Ten is a bunch of slow-footed, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dusters, the Pac-10 is nothing more than USC and the Nine Dwarfs. What about the Atlantic Coast Conference? C'mon, that's a basketball league. The Big East? Puh-lease.

"When you do it three years in a row," said Florida tight end Tate Casey, "some people are going to start resenting you. I think that's what we're seeing."

But this dynamic runs a bit deeper.

College football is the undisputed king of Southern sports, unencumbered by the loyalties reserved for pro teams (latecomers to the region) and a source of pride to those who still remember the struggles of integration and the civil rights movement.