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Friday, March 28, 2008
Fun Facts For a Free-Wheeling Friday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s “Free-Wheeling Friday” again which means we don’t have to be entirely serious. Here is a bunch of stuff I stumbled on while looking for something else. Nothing heavy. They are just some fun facts for your consideration.
And yes, this is for the SEC fans. ACC fans, I’ll make it up to you on another blog.
Fun Fact No. 1
Reasonable (or unreasonable) people can disagree over whether of not the SEC is the strongest football conference in the country. But here is the rundown, by conference, of the 10 national champions since the BCS began in 1998:
SEC (4): Tennessee (1998); LSU (2003); Florida (2006); LSU (2007).
Big 12 (2): Oklahoma (2000); Texas (2005).
ACC (1): Florida State (1999).
Big East (1): Miami (2001).
Big Ten (1): Ohio State (2002).
Pac-10 (1): Southern Cal (2004).
Fun Fact. No. 2
Well, it’s really not a fact, but it is fun. Have you ever wondered what the football landscape would look like if Auburn had gotten a shot at the 2004 national championship, when the Tigers were 13-0? If Auburn had beaten Southern Cal or Oklahoma, the last five BCS national champions would be:
2003: LSU
2004: Auburn
2005: Texas
2006: Florida
2007: LSU
Is the SEC just lucky? Does the league just have better players and coaches? What explains this run of success? And will it continue?
Fun Fact No. 3
Here are the final attendance figures from the NCAA for the 2007 season. The SEC led in total attendance for the 27th consecutive year. The SEC also led in average attendance per game.
Conference—————Avg. attendance
SEC————————-75,139
Big Ten——————-71,158
Big 12———————60,419
Pac-10———————57,910
ACC————————-53,733
Big East——————41,455
Mountain West———-33,657
