For 16 years, we've been stuck with silly debates comparing teams in conferences that don't play each other. After this year, the debate becomes (a little) less absurd.
ATLANTA -- Even when the crowd disperses from downtown Atlanta tonight at the end of the SEC Championship Game, the debate will rage on.
Heck, it'll just be starting.
Should the SEC champion -- and it doesn't matter if it's Missouri and Auburn, two teams with almost identical one-loss resumes that will be separated on the Georgia Dome turf -- have a chance to deliver the conference an eight straight BCS national championship?
Or should unbeaten Ohio State go instead, despite a weaker schedule? And what of top-ranked Florida State, which is coming out of the weakest conference of the four teams (well, three after one of the SEC teams eliminates the other) in question?
What's the answer?
I don't know. Sure, I have an opinion, but I don't really know.
And neither do you.
And neither does any computer.
That's what has made these last 16 years so absurd. College football invites but two teams out of 120-something FBS members (more or less, depending on the year), most of whom never play each other, for one game to determine a national champion.
How absurd is that?
So would a 13-0 Ohio State team be better than a 12-1 Auburn or a 12-1 Missouri?
You can make the case. Ohio State would have done everything it could possibly do right, including beating a good Michigan State team. As for Auburn, nice resume, but it shouldn't have lost by two touchdowns (including the last score of the game) in a decisive loss at LSU. As for Missouri, it shouldn't have blown a 17-point lead at home to lose to South Carolina.
Of course, you can also make the case for the Auburn-Missouri winner. Ohio State would not have had to go through the toughest league in the country (and as much as the rest of the nation is tired of hearing it, it's true) and its best non-conference win -- was it 1-11 California or 7-5 San Diego State? -- doesn't add much to the resume either.
But how can we really compare a one-loss SEC team to an unbeaten Big 10 team?
You can go with the NFL draft -- the SEC more NFL players than any other league. But that doesn't always tell the story. Take Auburn's last team to win a national title, in 2010. Sure, Cam Newton was freakishly good, but that team also had a great college offensive line opening holes for Newton and only one player off that line -- offensive tackle Lee Ziemba -- was drafted in the 2011 draft. And that didn't happen until the seventh round.
So NFL talent doesn't always tell the whole story. The SEC is supposed to be a much better league than the ACC this year, but on the field, the two leagues had competitive games this season, with the SEC enjoying a 5-3 edge but only after winning two dramatic games -- Vanderbilt over Wake Forest and Georgia over Georgia Tech in overtime -- on the season's final day.
A couple of plays here and there and the ACC could have finished 5-3 against the SEC this year.
The point? The SEC's superiority over the rest of college football is real, but it can be overblown. If you have a matchup between a good SEC team and a good team from the Big 10, Pac-12, Big 12 or even the ACC, you can expect a good, competitive game more often than not.
We've gone around and around on this stuff for 16 years now and the bottom line is, we don't know.
What can we base the comparison between the two leagues on? Missouri's win over Indiana? Come on. The SEC is 21-20 in bowl games against the Big 10 in the BCS era. That's hardly a track record that tells you the SEC should get some special pass.
Besides, that's all in the past. This year deserves to be judged on the merits of this year and the bottom line is SEC and Big 10 members simply don't play often enough for sweeping conclusions.
And frankly, it shouldn't matter and next year, more than any year in the the history of college football, it won't.
If this were next year and FSU and Ohio State both won, then Ohio State would play the SEC champion in a national semifinal.
That SEC vs. Big 10 debate would work itself out on the field. And not a Capital One, Outback or Gator Bowl, but in a game with national championship implications.
That's the way these debates should be settled, isn't it?