I've played sports my whole life and the one thing people always say is this. "You can't practices against speed if you don't have it." And the Big 10 doesn't have the speed. (speed is only one part of the game) In high school, we were a bunch of white boys playing basketball on daddy's dime against far superior talent. We had some good players, but we were slow. Granted we had some guys who had some speed and those guys I mean maybe two. We had a few guys go play at D1 levels in football and two of them are playing pro-ball. But our basketball team was slow. So slow that coach put 6 defenders out on the court multiple times to simulate the amount of speed we would  be playing against. Now our football team wasn't the fastest but they won two state titles in 5yrs not bad for 2a school. And they weren't blazing any trails. Or burning a lot of people deep on sheer speed. They had great coach, great execution, and heart (bring the wood was their battle cry, so look out McFadden, they brought it a long time a go.) So my point is: You can still play a sport well with out speed. But why would you. It makes up for so many things!

The Big Ten is largely a smash mouth offense, hard nosed, at that. They do put up legitimate teams who play good football. The difference here is the type of game played. The Pac 10 is the only conference who can rival the SEC. The explosiveness of those two conferences towers over the Big 10. I agree with the theory "just cuz the best team is in your conference doesn't mean you are the best conference." But the SEC is the best conference.

I'll tell you why. They have the most talent. LA, FL, TX, and CA have the best high-school football programs in the nation.  You can double check my stats but I'm pretty sure LA the state puts more players in the pros per capita than any other state. TX has top recruits every year go to the SEC. UF get the cream of the crop in its own state. I know there are great players all over the country. But the football in La, TX, and FL  is just better. You won't find many programs that don't have players from one of those states. And the SEC get the best of them. USC is the only school that consistently steals TOP recruits from those states. But their success in the last 10 years was started by in state recruiting allowing; them improve. Therefore giving them a chance to regularly compete with the SEC in the fore mentioned states. The SEC is the faster conference, they bring in more talent, and they are the better conference.