re: Which fanbase needs the new season to start and get last year's bad taste gone?

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While I continue to struggle personally over the shame of losing to FSU, I need a little help in understanding what your opinion of "quality opposition to the winner" is.

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Quality opposition, man. Quality.


Actually, I just mean the same thing that has elevated the SEC every year recently -- other SEC teams providing the sort of challenge that 1) improves SOS; and 2) actually helps them improve on the field by battle-testing them. Auburn didn't get to the game alone last year, any more than Bama did the previous two years, or Auburn did the year before that, and so on. These teams all ran the SEC gauntlet and were better for it. Hell, it's my semi-serious theory that had Auburn been matched up with a better SEC-E team in the SECCG -- say, USCe -- they might have done better in the BCSNCG. Okay, maybe not, but I think it's undeniable that the toughness of the SEC has worked in its favor over the last decade or so.