It might come as a shock to you, but SEC stands for
Southestern Conference. That excludes the Midwest and Northeast.
So what you're saying is that to the Left Coasters it matters to, it matters alot, there's just not that many of them? My point to the other poster was in regards to TV ratings as an indicator of perceived quality of football conferences. I'd guess the population of SEC states is around 50 million, less than PAC10 or Big10 areas. And the SEC has to compete against ACC and Miami. Who does the PAC10 compete against, the WAC? Since the SEC regularly garners more TV money, it indicates the executives believe it will draw more interest. Interest=quality.
It also might come as a shock to you that I know that SEC stands for Southeastern Conference. According to 1999 US Census estimates, the 9 states having SEC teams have a population of 50.287 million and the 4 states having PAC10 teams have a population of 46.995 million. So, that's almost a wash. But now add in the fact that approximately 40 milllion of the potential PAC10 audience is in the pacific time zone. Contrast that with about half of the SEC potential audience in the eastern time zone and the other half in the central time zone. Networks are loathe to carry a football game in prime time in another region of the country. And, as I mentioned in my earlier post, the PAC10 population is spread over a much larger geographical area so that the attraction of a particular PAC10 game tends to be limited to the market of the schools playing in that game.