and they are truly the best team in the conference. With other conferences, the division winner might have only won their division because they avoided having to play the top teams in the other division (i.e. Georgia wins the SEC East with a 7-1 conference record playing Miss St. and Arkansas from the west while Florida finishes 2nd with losses to both LSU and Alabama). With the old Big 10 (+1) they only played 8 of the other 10 teams so it was possible for a team to go undefeated in conference without having to play the other top 2 teams.