THE CFB BUYERS' GUIDE: CONFERENCES

Once again, EDSBS and Consumers Union have teamed up to ensure that you get the absolute best value for your college football dollar. This week we brought some entire conferences into our state-of-the-art testing lab, and the results may surprise you -- unless you caught the last five minutes of Saturday's LSU-Tennessee game, in which case you have achieved a state of human evolution that can be described as "post-surprise" and where you are incapable of being shocked by anything again, ever.

TOP RATED

PAC-10 | ■ ■ ■ ■ □
Highs: Processes touchdowns with blazing speed and efficiency, spectacular cheerleading squads across the board.
Lows: Still untested against real defenses, tacky color schemes, smells like patchouli.
We're just as surprised as you are: How did this brand, long associated with nonexistent defense and various strains of West Coast elitism, rise to the top of our ratings, particularly in a year when its top-selling USC product underwent an embarrassing recall? Simple -- because Oregon, Stanford, and Arizona stepped up to the plate to make the battle for a Rose Bowl berth one of the most exciting conference races we've seen in a long while. And even mid-range offerings such as Oregon State, USC, and California are going to win enough games to make things interesting. Across the board, the Pac-10's product line features quad-core processors that execute even the most complicated scoring tasks in the blink of an eye, and while we still don't have enough data to determine how they'll perform when put up against the tough defenses of other conferences, they've been designed with plenty of backup power: If the team crashes or starts running slowly, just switch to "graphics-only" mode and watch the lovely cheerleaders until the system is back on line again. That's the kind of no-stone-unturned engineering we can applaud, and at least for this model year, it earns our top score in the class.

ABOVE AVERAGE

APPLE MAC PRO | ■ ■ ■ ½ □
Highs: Sleek design, great for audio/video editing, unsurpassed tech support.
Lows: Expensive, delicate, even the on/off switch is confusing.
Nearly matching the Pac-10 in speed and processing power, and falling just short on durability, is Apple's venerable line of intuitively designed desktops. It looks way better than those godawful Oregon unis and, in addition, is far superior in memory-intensive tasks such as editing and playing high-definition graphics and video. (By comparison, we asked LaMichael James to put together a highlight reel of his big plays from the Stanford game, and the best he could come up with was a picture of himself with the words "I RUN FAST" scrawled across it in MS Paint.) Now, you're not going to want to put one of these up against an SEC defensive line on a weekly basis, and by the way, if you're spending thousands of dollars on a computer, shouldn't you be able to find the power button without calling tech support? Other than those inconveniences, however, the Mac Pro earns its billing as a leader in the class.

SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE | ■ ■ ■ □ □
Highs: Great defenses, great coeds, probably going to win the national title again.
Lows: Too much equipment is proprietary, can be unpredictable.
I know that SEC fans, who compose the majority of this website's readership, are already composing their furious comments/e-mails/notes tied to bricks and thrown through windows. But even the most loyal devotees of this brand have to concede that it's been coasting on its high-end products for a couple years now. Yes, the items at the top of the model range will beat anything out there, but you get toward the middle of the product line and you start to uncover lots of flaws. You may be attracted to the brand name, but do you really want to put your faith in Ole Miss this year? Or Tennessee? Or an LSU team whose victories make you wonder if some bartender at the Buffalo WIld Wings in Baton Rouge might actually be controlling things through a top-secret communications system? (And let's not even talk about Georgia, a once-venerable offering that underwent a disastrous redesign for 2010 -- processor knocked back to 486 speed; DVD-R drive replaced with an 8-track player.) There also seems to be a certain degree of chauvinism engineered into these teams' designs, as you can barely get their highly proprietary hardware to even acknowledge the existence of other conferences' equipment. If you can afford the Alabama or Auburn units at the top of the line, jump on them, but if you're on a more modest budget you'd be well served by at least doing some intraleague comparison shopping.

AVERAGE

BELOW AVERAGE

MOUNTAIN WEST | ■ ■ □ □ □
Highs: Practically guaranteed to put a team in the BCS, soon to expand its product line.
Lows: Top-heavy, still can't match the name brands' computing power overall.
A budget-priced brand that's experienced its share of lineup shuffling over the years, the MWC seems to be making a bid to play with the big boys. Frankly, we're not 100-percent convinced they're ready. Like the SEC, the Mountain West has a group of top-of-the-line offerings that can play with anyone out there, but you get below that and you're basically dealing with a bunch of glorified pocket calculators. Nice scenery, and the acquisition of Boise State, Nevada and Fresno State might earn them BCS-qualifier status, but until then we have to relegate this brand to the bottom half of our rankings.

NOT ACCEPTABLE

BIG EAST | X
There's a very good chance that one of the following will earn a BCS auto-bid this year: a team that got taken to overtime by Marshall; a team that lost by two TDs to Temple; a team that lost by four TDs to Miami, at home; or a team that just got punked by Tulane. For that, you can thank the Big East, a league that is perhaps a better argument for the Mountain West's prospective BCS status than anything the Mountain West itself has actually done. The BE did an admirable job of keeping its head above water in the years immediately following its raping and pillaging at the hands of the ACC, but first Petrino left, then Rodriguez, and now the league just looks like a bunch of FCS squads who got on the wrong bus by mistake and were rewarded with the opportunity to watch their champion get dumptrucked in the Orange or Sugar bowls. Until major upgrades are made, we have to give the Big East our Not Acceptable rating.