Another ugly impact of having these giant mega-conferences. Hard to say that a team is best or even second or third best in a conference when the schedule doesn't have them play any of the top teams until a CCG.
And for the SEC whiners, they almost never leave the SEC footprint to play games, play a bunch of free wins in the OOC, play a pushover (SunBelt or FCS) near the end of the season to pad their records, and oh by the way remind me of why playing Mississipi State, Kentucky, Auburn this year, Vandy most years, even Florida and Oklahoma qualifies as quality wins?
The top schools have loads of talent but the conference itself is extremely topheavy and set up to over-exaggerate the good teams.