Saturday night proved one point: the third or fourth best team in the SEC might be the fifth or sixth best team in the country, and could certainly win almost any other conference. Alabama’s emphatic thumping of Clemson in the Georgia Dome put a fat exclamation point on what has finally become conventional wisdom among experts and even begrudging fans: The SEC is the strongest conference in college football. No other league comes close.

Sure, you have the occasional holdout. Kirk Herbstreit couldn’t stop gushing about Michigan’s win over Florida last New Year’s Day.

“This goes to show that the Big 10 can, indeed, play with the SEC, and it should quiet the critics who think otherwise,” he all but yelled. Nobody pointed out that Michigan was the second-best team in the Big 10 at the time and Florida was, at best, the fourth-, maybe fifth- best team in the SEC.

Herbstreit, prone to hyperbole, made another point on Saturday night, but this one was right on the money. “Wow,” he said after Alabama’s great showing. “I didn’t think it was possible, but Georgia’s schedule just got a lot harder.”

And that, at the end of the day, is the problem.

Looking past next week’s game with Central Michigan (a mistake that could lead to an early hiccup), the Georgia schedule looks like this: at South Carolina, at Arizona State, Alabama, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, at LSU, at Florida, at Auburn, and finishing with Georgia Tech.

Then there’s Alabama, which, if you throw out Tulane, Western Kentucky, and Arkansas State, has to play: at Georgia, at Arkansas, at Tennessee, and at LSU, plus hosting Mississippi State and the dreaded Iron Bowl against Auburn.

Florida? After beating up on Hawaii, the Gators have: Miami, at Tennessee, Old Miss, at Arkansas, LSU, Kentucky, Georgia, at Vanderbilt, and South Carolina, then getting a semi-break with The Citadel before finishing with Florida State.

Compare that with the schedule of Ohio State: Youngstown State, Ohio U., USC (the toughest game on the schedule), Troy University, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Purdue, Michigan State, Penn State (another toughie), Northwestern, Illinois, and, finally, Michigan.

Or Michigan: Miami (Ohio), Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Illinois, Toledo, Penn State, Michigan State, Purdue, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Ohio State.

How do you think any of those teams would do in the SEC?

Unfortunately, the SEC has become its own worst enemy. By becoming the best conference in college football across the board, the conference winner might enter bowl season with one, two, maybe even three losses to extremely good teams, which all but eliminates them from BCS consideration. Sure, strength of schedule is supposed to have weight, but as long as guys like Herbstreit think Wisconsin can hang with Alabama, that factor gets diminished.

It is a sad fact of life: the winner of the SEC, regardless of overall record, will probably be the best team in college football. Like last year when LSU was "invited" to play the Big 10's best in the championship game, hopefully the BCS will once again recognize that two SEC losses is at least as good as one or none elsewhere.