I’m calling it Conference Superiority Complex, CSC for simplicity of typing. We’ve all been affected by it, and at some point, infected with it. Over the past few years of college football, we’ve translated what could have been arguments about some of the best seasons in college football’s history into glorified conference beauty pageants. Fans engulf message boards, blogs, radio call-in shows, TV, and any other sports medium arguing the merits of their conference as the newest and most obnoxious way to support their team. This most recent slant on chest-pounding braggadocio began after the Auburn snub of ’04. It was amplified by the Big Ten’s embarrassing debacle in the ’06 BCS game. It cemented in every home after last season’s coin flip selection of LSU as Ohio State’s BCS opponent that left teams in every BCS conference debating the merits of their top contender. Before we knew it, you, a die-hard Longhorns fan, woke up in the bed of an Oklahoma Sooner with a Missouri T-shirt on and Jayhawks face tattoos. All in the name of advocating your conference to the BCS selection committees. It’s sickening what CSC has made us do, but we have all been there over the past 48 months. How on earth did we go from a college football landscape that emphasized and survived on things like The Third Week in October, The Game, The Red River Shootout, The Border War, The Backyard Brawl, etc., to one that still emphasizes these games but only if they don’t hurt their conference's chances of winning a championship? It's all about perspectives. We fans need to get our perspectives back; that’s what I’m here to help. We’ll start with you, Mr. Husky.  Lost out there in the Pacific Northwest, many of you and your Pac-10 brethren have decided the only way to get noticed was to band together and fight those east of the Rockies together.  Huskies, Cougars, and Ducks joined side-by-side in an attempt to gain legitimacy. Only their reasoning came out sounding something like, "USC has the most top-five finishes of any team over the past six seasons." What? Why the heck are Washington and Oregon fans trying to defend themselves against other conferences by quoting USC stats? How does this make sense? It doesn’t.

But that’s what CSC is, a defense of the best team in your conference no matter who it is. If your team isn’t that team, you turn to the team that is, and by default it makes your team better. That’s the theory at least. How do you cure it, oh wearer of the purple and gold? You have to get back to your roots. When someone says the Pac-10 sucks, you say, "No it doesn’t, but I heard people from Wazzou finally discovered how to make fire."  You can defend your conference and defend your fanhood credibility at the same time. CSC cannot be allowed to take what’s most important to us, and for Washington fans, it’s the Apple Cup. What would you do if the Apple Cup wasn’t important to you anymore? What if defeating your lifelong rival became less important than proving yourself to other conferences? Think about it. Next up, Sparty.  Now you’ve been left behind in recent years, the butt of a joke who is part of an even larger joke.  Your epic collapses in October and November only threw fuel on the fire of the Big Ten sucks bonanza.  But this isn’t you. You shouldn’t become involved in a Big Ten supremacy debate that forces you to stick up for that other state team. Sparty hates one team more than all others, that hideously colored, cross-state rival, M*ch*g*n.  So how can you justify yourself cheering for Big Blue last New Year’s to defeat the Florida Gators? That wasn’t you talking; the CSC had taken over.

It will make you do uncontrollable things, things you thought you weren’t capable of, and most definitely aren't proud of. Like when Adrian Arrington caught the go-ahead score in the CapitalOne Bowl, you cheered. Or how the Appalachian State game made you feel bittersweet. Now what would the Big Ten haters say, you thought? Or when Wisconsin didn’t get upset last September by UNLV, you breathed a sigh of relief because you didn't have to defend yet another Big Ten collapse even though five years ago that same loss Wisconsin suffered to UNLV was hilarious. And you felt some amount of shame, and partly responsible for Ohio State losing the past two BCS championships Why? You hate Ohio State. CSC made you do that If your conference is perceived as weak, you are weak. But how much are you willing to give up to defend a conference made up of teams you hate? All that is right and, to a point, pure about sports in general are the rivalries.  Could you ever imagine a Yankees fan cheering for a Red Sox team when the only effect it had would be AL bragging rights? Do you think the Yankees’ fans cheered for Boston or Colorado last fall? Would a Duke fan cheer for the Tar Heels in the Final Four because it makes the ACC top dog? No! Does a Cowboys fan gloat about the fact that they beat the Super Bowl champion Giants twice, even though they didn't win the Super Bowl? Well some dumb ones might; they are from Texas after all, but they shouldn't. Sparty, you must go back to your bitter ways of old. It’s the only thing that can save you from further years of quoting M*ch*g*n and Ohio State statistics to make yourself look good. It’s not natural, it’s not healthy. Cornhuskers, you have the same problem.  Your once proud and distinguished program has fallen on hard times the past few seasons, but people forget only seven years ago you were in the BCS Championship game. That’s more than Alabama can say. So you’ve latched on to how well Texas and Oklahoma have done as a proclamation for your program, you’re living vicariously through them while your program is down. You even wished Missouri a BCS bid last season, even though they pasted you 41-6. Why do this? You had 33 consecutive seasons of nine-plus wins from 1969-2001.