While I would agree that the SEC does not have as tough of a non-conference schedule, you forgot some good opponents in there. Tennessee played California for example, Mississippi State played West Virginia, LSU played Arizona (an ok team), Georgia played Colorado (who is awful this year, but is still better than Duke who you listed) and so on. The Pac 10 is really the only major conference this year that has really done a very good job of playing OOC opponents this year-everybody else has been close to the same strength. Look at one computer's strength of schedule non-conference for the 6 major conferences: Pac 10: .530 ACC: .456 Big East: .427 Big 10: .415 SEC: .410 Big 12: .410 2nd is closer to 6th then it is to first, and the last 4 conferences are very, very close, I only ranked the road games that they played. These were ALL the non-conference road games that the SEC played. With only Florida being an elite team that played a quality non-conference road game. Yes they did have some better home games. Still Tennessee was the only Elite SEC team to play a Top 25 non-conference game. I do know that some Elite Big Ten schools have offered home and home series with some Elite SEC schools and have been denied. I am just saying that the SEC is considered the best because of perception. They will have success in Bowl games because they are mostly quasi home games for them. I would just like to see some of these schools play some good teams on the road some. I am not saying everyteam everyyear but in a year like this you really dont have much to go on on how good the SEC is. As opposed to the Big Ten which had at least 5 non-conference road games against Top 25 teams. I didnt look it up yet I just thought of 5 off the top of my head. If an elite SEC school had played at Notre Dame or Texas or someone similar than we could at least get a feel for how good the conference really is. Well Florida did schedule FSU. FSU was supposed to be pretty elite but ending up sucking pretty bad. And that game was awful and Florida didnt look to good and barely won.