Isn't it fitting? The SEC was the first major conference to do the Media Days thing last week, and Mike Slive and his crew had the stage to themselves.
The wannabes get to share the spotlight this week.
The ACC, also known as SEC Lite, got together Sunday and Monday in Greensboro, N.C., because nothing screams football like a regular stop for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The Big 12, feeling its oats after partnering up with the SEC for the Champions Bowl, at least has the decency to put its preseason football shindig in a football city. Baghdad Bob Stoops and friends are spreading a little propaganda around Dallas on Monday and Tuesday.
The Big Ten takes over Wednesday and Thursday in Chicago. Ohio State's Urban Meyer, picking up where he left off at Florida, will have to address the legal entanglements of four different Buckeyes.
The Pac-12 brings up the rear on Friday, and no, that's not a Lane Kiffin reference, but a question has to be asked. If you gather your coaches and players at the Sony Studios Lot in Culver City, Calif., don't you people take your football seriously out there?
This would be a good time to note that it's been three years since one of the Other Four conferences among the Group of Five supplied some tackling dummies for the SEC in the BCS Championship Game.
That's right. Of the last four teams to play for the national title, three came from the SEC and the other was Notre Dame, which is still independent in football despite Steve Spurrier's best efforts.
You have to go back past Alabama vs. Notre Dame and Alabama vs. LSU to find Oregon giving Auburn its best shot and coming up short. If you're scoring at home, that gives the SEC four of the last six BCS Championship Game participants.
Someone asked Bob Bowlsby, the Big 12 commissioner, the importance of playing and beating SEC teams to become the best conference in the country.
"I don't think you can be the best without playing the best," Bowlsby said. "We have the arrangement in the Sugar Bowl that will in most years have a Big 12 team playing an SEC team. We will also likely play the SEC in at least one other and probably two other bowl games.
"So we believe in the best playing the best, and I don't think you can lay claim to it unless you can beat them."
Smart man.
John Swofford, the big fish in the ACC, patted his league on the back for playing "the toughest non-conference schedule" in the country this season. For example, he said, the ACC "will play nine non‑conference games against six teams selected by ESPN.com in its early preseason top ten."
Seven of those game are against SEC powers: Virginia Tech against No. 1 Alabama; Clemson and Georgia Tech against No. 6 Georgia; Miami and Florida State against No. 7 Florida; and North Carolina and Clemson against No. 10 South Carolina.
It's not a stretch to suggest the ACC could go 0-7 in those matchups.
So if the ACC's not ready to challenge the SEC, who is? Which league has a team or two that not only could earn a spot in the BCS Championship Game but also won't roll over when it finds an SEC team waiting there?
The Pac-12 fits that suit. Stanford and Oregon have become the class of that conference. Whoever survives their battle for league supremacy could be a worthy opponent for, um, I don't know, say, Alabama in the national title game.
The Cardinal or the Ducks would have home-region advantage in the Rose Bowl. Of course, either team would need all the help it could get, and it probably still wouldn't be enough.
As the Big 12's Bowlsby said, "We think we can play with anybody in the country, but it's impossible to call yourself the best league in college football unless you can win the national championship."
If Bowlsby, Swofford, the Big Ten's Jim Delany or the Pac-12's Larry Scott want to call themselves the best league in the country, it's easy. Pick up the phone and start dialing. The area code's 205.