. . . has its fair share of yahoos, although I believe the same could be said for every conference's fan base. We also agree that Les Miles is an idiot.

There certainly is an element in the South that still sneers, "The Pac-10's not a real conference." Such statements are sheer nonsense and conscientious S.E.C. fans should do their part to correct such people or marginalize them. Legitimate comparisons, contrasts, and criticisms are one thing; blanket denunciations, unencumbered by facts, make us all look bad, which is why I try to address such silliness (particularly when coming from S.E.C. coaches, who ought to know better) promptly.

There does, however, appear to be an equally strong segment on the West Coast that possesses a visceral disdain for the Southeastern Conference. As with the yahoo contingent in the Southeast, these people are a small yet vocal minority who appear in disproportionate numbers on some message boards. Thus, we get comments such as this:

It's one thing for me to say (as I often do) "I hate Auburn." I know Auburn people. I live in the state that probably contains the country's second-highest concentration of Auburn fans. My team has played Auburn every year of my lifetime. I know from Auburn.

Most of the yahoos on both coasts have never attended one of the other conference's games or met any of the other conference's fans face-to-face. Consequently, we deal in stereotypical generalizations---inbred backwoodsmen with chaws in their cheeks and white robes in their closets against prissy tree-huggers sharing marijuana cigarettes and wearing tie-dyed T-shirts---that bear no resemblance to the latter-day reality and never were representative of more than a small minority.

I have no problem calling a yahoo a yahoo, regardless of his Z.I.P. code, but I want to be careful not to cast too wide a net. You are, unfortunately, correct that some S.E.C. fans have an unnatural, unnecessary, unhealthy, and unjustified disdain for the Pac-10. Personally, I don't see why they feel this way; as evidenced by the SportsBlogs Nation stable of Pac-10 bloggers, West Coast fans are an impassioned, intelligent, likeable bunch with whom the best S.E.C. fans have much in common.

As I see it, our job is to raise the tenor of the conversation, even when singling out those who are not living up to the standards we ought to expect from fans of major intercollegiate athletics programs. I appreciate your clarification that you were directing attention to a particular (and particularly vocal) segment of fans rather than an entire league's fans en masse and I agree with you that the boosters on neither coast have adequate reasons for heaping wholesale condemnation upon the other conference.

I am grateful to you for taking the time to make that clear. Hopefully, partisans of both B.C.S. leagues will have moved past this dispute by the time the Ducks welcome the 'Dawgs to Autzen Stadium on September 19, 2015, and Georgia hosts Oregon between the hedges on September 17, 2016. I, for one, am looking forward to it.