The Pacific 10 Conference's annual media day, which has frankly never been able to hold Billy Cannon's shorts when compared to the Southeastern Conference's media day, was fouled up Thursday at a hotel somewhere near LAX.
It was a wonder they had silverware for the buffet.
Maybe you haven't heard -- the SEC is better than the Pac-10.
Les Miles, the head coach at Louisiana State, said so.
Anything we(st) can do, they can do better.
"I've been in this conference 19 years," Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti said as he nibbled off his lunch plate. "I've heard it every year regardless. It's just a built-in bias against the West Coast."
Miles, for no apparent reason (you don't need one in the South), riled up his congregation recently as he envisioned a possible Bowl Championship Series national title showdown against USC in the Louisiana Superdome on Jan. 7.
"I can tell you this, that they have a much easier road to travel," Miles said of USC. "They're going to play real knockdown drag-outs with UCLA and Washington, Cal-Berkeley, Stanford -- some real juggernauts -- and they're going to end up, it would be my guess, in some position so if they win a game or two, that they'll end up in the title [game]. I would like that path for us."
Miles later told reporters in Baton Rouge that, as far as teams go, the Pac-10 "may have one or two really good ones."
Why does the SEC do it?
Why can't it just shut up and play?
Answer: It can't help itself.
The SEC still can't get over Auburn going undefeated in 2004 and having to watch USC and Oklahoma play for the BCS title.
It still can't stand the fact LSU had to share the national title with USC in 2003.
The SEC's status as the nation's preeminent college football conference -- rarely argued by anyone -- is only demeaned by the league's seemingly insatiable need to tell everyone about it.
"They're fanatics," first-year Arizona State Coach Dennis Erickson said. "Sometimes you're so isolated, with tunnel vision, you think that nothing else exists. There is no other football. Do they even play out west?"
You can argue all day the SEC is better than the Pac-10 but you can't argue one is cream sauce and one is crud.
The Pac-10 is certainly better than Miles thinks, poised for one of its most exciting seasons ever. Its top quarterbacks could hitch a bus south tomorrow and beat out any number of top SEC quarterbacks.
