As part of the building hype for the 2014 college football season and first year with a playoff it’s become popular to take shots and downplay the Southeastern Conference’s recent dominance.

Numerous coaches don’t like that it only has eight-game league schedules. Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops called it a top-heavy conference and suggested that the perception of SEC’s superiority is due to “propaganda.” Many journalists and analysts are jumping on the Pac-12 bandwagon, saying that it’s caught the SEC.

The reason why boils down to the Pac-12’s high-profile quarterbacks. There are 10 returning starters who coming in have made a combined 198 starts. Seven have been starters for more than one year.

Leading the group are Marcus Mariota of Oregon and Brett Hundley of UCLA, who are getting preseason Hesiman Trophy buzz. There’s also Kevin Hogan (Stanford), Taylor Kelly (Arizona State), Sean Mannion (Oregon State) and Connor Halliday (Washington State).

All have posted impressive numbers, although the defenses they’ve faced aren’t quite the same as what the quarterbacks in the SEC regularly see. Specifically, last season Southern California finished 13th and Stanford was 16th in total defense, while the SEC had six of the top 23 teams in that statistical category.

So while the Pac-12 might be poised for a good year, here are 10 reasons what it’s not on par with the SEC … at least not yet.

1. National championships

The Pac-12’s last title was in 2004, and has since been vacated. Southern California was voted No 1 by the Associated Press in 2003, but the Trojans didn’t play in the national championship game won by LSU. Previous to that one has to go back to Washington’s split title in 1991.

Meanwhile, the SEC won seven of the last eight crystal footballs.

2. The BCS era

The Pac-12 was an impressive 13-8 (.619) in BCS bowls.

The SEC was 17-10 (.630). It was also 9-2 in title game while the Pac-12 was 1-2 while making the same number of appearances as the Big East.

3. Bowl results

Here are last year’s bowl results for the Pac-12:
New Mexico Bowl: Colorado State 48, Washington State 45
Las Vegas Bowl: #25 USC 45, Fresno State 20
Hawai’i Bowl: Oregon State 38, Boise State 23
Fight Hunger Bowl: Washington 31, BYU 16
Holiday Bowl: Texas Tech 37, #14 Arizona State 23
Alamo Bowl: #10 Oregon 30, Texas 7
Independence Bowl: Arizona 42, Boston College 19
Sun Bowl: #17 UCLA 42, Virginia Tech 12
Rose Bowl: #4 Michigan State 24, #5 Stanford 20

Overall, the Pac-12 went 6-3.
The SEC went 7-3 despite its second loss in the title game. The other was when Alabama defeated LSU.

4. Coaches

It’s an impressive group, with David Shaw, Chris Petersen, Todd Graham, Mike Riley, Mike Leach, Rich Rodriguez, Jim Mora, Steve Sarkisian, Mike MacIntyre, Kyle Whittingham, Mark Helfrich and Sonny Dykes.

However, Nick Saban, Les Miles and Steve Spurrier have combined to win six national championships, and Urban Meyer won two at Florida before stepping down and heading to Ohio State a year later.

5. The NFL Draft

The Pac-12 had three first-round selections this past May, fifth among all conferences. Overall it ended up third with 34 players selected.

The SEC had 11 first-round selections and 49 overall to lead both categories.

6. Program rankings

In our recent rankings, which are equally based on last year and all-time results, the Pac-12 had four teams in the top 25 and was fourth among all leagues.

The SEC had eight teams in the top 25 and topped the league standings ahead of the Big 10 and ACC.

http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-football/whos-1-ranking-best-college-football-programs/

7. The All-Time Associated Press Poll

Originally devised by former SEC assistant director of media relations Charles Woodroof, it uses the same point system as the weekly polls, using each season’s final results. USC is seventh, UCLA 17th and Washington 21st.

The SEC has eight teams in the top 20.

8. All-Americans

The Pac-12 had five players on the Associated Press’ 2013 All-American team, the SEC had six.

In his preseason All-American team, Phil Steele listed seven players from the Pac-12, including Mariota over Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston. He had 10 players from the SEC.

Also, the SEC has won the Heisman four times since the Pac-12 last did, Matt Leinhart in 2004 (Reggie Bush won in 2005, but had to return it following NCAA penalties).

9. Head to head

If you did a conference challenge and matched up the top six teams in each conference according to the preseason Associated Press poll, the pairings would have been as follows:

2 Alabama vs. 3 Oregon
6 Auburn vs. 7 UCLA
9 South Carolina vs. 11 Stanford
12 Georgia vs. 15 USC
13 LSU vs. 19 Arizona State
18 Ole Miss vs. 25 Washington

Although its obviously arguable, the SEC might have been favored in each game at a neutral site. The league also had two more teams ranked, No. 21 Texas A&M and 24 Missouri, and led by Florida three other SEC teams received votes in the preseason poll. Only one did for the Pac-10

10. SEC quarterbacks

Just because they didn’t have the same level of name recognition doesn’t mean there won’t be good passers in the SEC this fall.

For example, there aren’t too many people who don’t know who Kenny Hill is now after he broke Johnny Manziel’s single-game passing record with 511 yards Thursday night as Texas A&M won at South Carolina, 52-28.

Maybe it will be a banner year for the Pac-12, but until it or any other conference proves otherwise the SEC is still clearly the best conference in the nation.