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I watched a part of the game last night on Tivo since there wasn't anything else on, and I remembered why I told my wife on Ohio State's 3rd or 4th possession that Florida was going to win. The Gator's (just like most of the rest of the SEC) defensive ends were much faster than the OSU offensive line expected. They collapsed the pocket on almost every pass play. Smith got off a few shorter passes, but he only had a couple of chances in the first half to look anywhere farther than 5-7 yards deep.
The second half was just a seminar on why your defensive line and linebackers need to be as fast as possible. Other than possibly Penn State and maybe about half the Michigan group, no one in the big ten (they lost their right to capital letters after this bowl season) has speed in the non-secondary part of their defense. Every SEC team that's worth talking about (FL, GA, TN, AL, LSU, AU and maybe SC and AR) has very quick D-linemen and linebackers.
Honestly, if I were a Texas fan, I'd be worried that the 'Horns didn't have better speed.
And that, my friends, is one more reason that the SEC is the premier football conference in the country. Not to mention the fact that the big ten has only won 3 national championships in the last 30 years (OSU - 02, OSU - 98 [in 1 of 19 polls but I'll give it to them], MI - 97, MI - 85 [2 of 17 polls]). I didn't count Penn State until they joined the conference 1995 (for football), so none of those national championships get counted. As a comparison, the SEC had at least 12 that I counted quickly. There multiple champions in lots of years, but everyone got credit.
In other words (and to repeat myself from an earlier post), suck it big ten.
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