MIAMI - It's time to pull back the curtain.
Thursday's BCS National Championship Game between No. 1 UF and No. 2 Oklahoma will finally settle the argument over which conference is the best in college football.
For the first time in several years, the Southeastern Conference's reputation as the best league has come into question, while the Sooners and Big 12 mates Texas and Texas Tech put up astronomical statistics and spent the better part of the season ranked in the nation's top 10.
But just as the Gators cemented their conference's supremacy by thrashing Ohio State for the 2006 national title, they can keep the SEC's legacy intact by stopping Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford and claiming a third-straight championship for the SEC.
"We feel like the SEC is the conference under the NFL," linebacker Brandon Spikes said. "It's the NFL and the SEC, and we don't really pay attention to too many other conferences because we feel like the athletes there are kind of different from the SEC. I don't want to say anything out of the way, so I can't really tell you how I personally feel about the other conferences, but I'll just say it's the NFL and then the SEC.
"There's a gap, by far, and then it's everybody else."
That gap has narrowed this season, as the Big 12 had five of the nation's top 10 scoring offenses and four teams ranked in the top 15 of the final Associated Press poll, the most of any conference.
Critics say those numbers are skewed because of weak defenses, while critics of the SEC attribute the success of UF and No. 4 Alabama to feeding off of slumping teams while the conference goes through a down year.
"They say we don't play any defense in the Big 12, so this is going to be our chance to prove it," said Sooners defensive back Dominique Franks, who added that it's unfair to attack Big 12 defenses without facing a Big 12 offense first.
"If you look at it, the three best quarterbacks in the country came from the Big 12, the three best receivers came from the Big 12, and the best three tight ends came from the Big 12," he said. "So, we've played some great offenses, and a lot of people don't understand that other conferences don't have what we faced."
While the players acknowledge the national title game will prove which conference is the best, most say the subject will be totally out of mind when they step on the field Thursday night.
"Big 12 versus SEC really doesn't mean a lot," UF receiver Louis Murphy said. "It's just going to be Florida-Oklahoma. As you can see, Ole Miss beat Texas Tech, and that was just those two teams. It all depends on how the teams play at the time."
