A compliment from the SEC??

Consider me impressed...

From Rivals' Florida site Gator Bait.

Florida will merit almost every conceivable accolade if it becomes the first team to win three BCS national championships in four years.

Urban Meyer would top everyone's list as the best college football coach in America. Tim Tebow would go down as the most accomplished football player in modern NCAA history. After handling the difficult pressure of being overwhelming favorites -?can't recall the last time a team received all but one first-place vote at SEC Media Days - the Gators' departing seniors could wrap themselves in glory for the rest of their lives.

But here's one title the Gators don't deserve: team of the decade.

Team of the last half of the decade? Absolutely.

Team of the decade? Not if the criteria includes sustained excellence.

Unfortunately for Florida, the Ron Zook years count on its permanent record. In fact, there should be an NCAA rule that disqualifies any school from consideration if Zook coached it for any part of the qualification period.

Seriously, though, USC is the team of the decade. The Trojans are 93-22 to Florida's 87-31 through the first nine years of the 21st century, a sizable difference. You can point out the weakness of the Pac-10 all you want, but it is much harder to explain away the slew of top-rated recruiting classes and constant supply of high NFL draft picks USC has produced to back up its record.

I had to read that twice just to make sure.

Florida can certainly make some claims of their own...especially if they win a 3rd BCS title this season. But it is nice to see some of the partisan crap get put aside and have someone actully look at the results in a rational manner. USC can't help it if the Pac-10 has had some bad years. That is out of their control, they simply go out and play the teams on the schedule. They can't change it because the teams are all in conference.

The BCS provides its own controversy in how they reward teams for scheduling cupcakes that turn into easy wins only to then punish a team harder who loses on the road against a confererence rival while in the same weekend another team loses to a confernce foe at home. Especially when that team has't traveled west of the Mississippi for a regular season game in 20+ years.

No one is saying that Florida isn't good and no one who follows the sport religiously will discount what UF has done in the past 5 years but it is still apples and oranges. Everyone wants to see USC v. UF but the system won't allow that to take place. USC's detractors say that with all that talent that Pete Carroll has amassed there is no reason that SC shouldn't have at least one or two more BCS Titles let alone not losing to inferior teams.

That is crap...

The controversy will rage on but it is nice to read a rational article that looks at the numbers and the overall results.