Southeastern Conference flexes BCS muscle

Let the rest of the country brag about its ivy-covered traditions and its cultural superiority. Down in Dixie, it's all about trotting out the nation's top college football teams on any given Saturday.

We're talking Southeastern Conference, which long ago proclaimed itself the best in the land. End of discussion.

It's a glory road of the gridiron that starts in Florida, winds its way up through Georgia and Tennessee, then curves back into Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, an unrivaled path of pigskin prestige.

Since the powers that run college football created the Bowl Championship Series a decade...