We all know the big story of the weekend: Wake up the Echoes, Notre Dame is in the National Championship Game. While it may be trendy to rip the Fighting Irish, they earned their golden ticket to Miami. Notre Dame’s opponent will be the champion of the Southeastern Conference, decided next weekend when Alabama and Georgia meet in Atlanta. Let’s take a closer look at the SEC in 2012, which is looking for its seventh consecutive national championship.

For a long time, the refrain among SEC folks was “there are no off weeks in the SEC.” If no team emerged with a perfect record, that was simply a testament to the depth of the conference. But this year has to go down as one of the most predictable seasons in the history of the SEC — or any other conference. There are six excellent teams representing the First Class of the conference: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina.

There are four genuinely terrible teams: Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas are the cellar dwellers, or Lower Class members. That leaves a lean, two-tiered middle class. Vanderbilt stands alone as an upper-middle class member, with the three M schools of the conference (Mississippi, Missouri, and Mississippi State) are lower-middle class schools. As it turned out, there are caste systems with more mobility than the SEC had in 2012. With 14 teams playing 8 conference games each, that leaves 56 conference games for the SEC. Here is what happened:

• The First Class (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina) went 30-0 in games against the rest of the conference, with 21 of those wins coming by at least 14 points.
• The Upper Middle Class (Vanderbilt) was equally predictable, going 0-3 against the First Class and 5-0 against everyone else.
• The Lower Middle Class (MSU, Mississippi and Missouri) went 0-12 against the First Class, with 9 losses coming by at least 19 points. They also went 0-2 against the Upper Middle Class, but finished 8-0 against the Lower Class, with 6 of those wins coming by double digits.
• The Bottom Class (Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas) finished 0-26 against the rest of the conference, with 18 of those losses coming by double digits

As a result of how stratified the conference was, it’s hard not to recognize how much the schedule impacts the results. Only two teams in the conference played just two games against First Class teams. It is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that those two teams happen to be the ones that landed in Atlanta.

In the West, Alabama went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the Lower Middle Class, and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. That’s a really easy schedule for the Crimson Tide — their second-best win this year came against Michigan (or Mississippi or MSU, if you prefer). That’s somewhat laughable for the team that is considered the #2 team in the country. Meanwhile, LSU had four games against the First Class of the SEC, going 2-2 in those games in addition to a 2-0 record against the LMC and a 3-0 mark against the Bottom Class. Texas A&M went 1-2 against the First Class, 3-0 against the LMC, and 2-0 against the BC. Is Alabama the best team in the division, or just lucky that they didn’t face Florida the way LSU and AM did? To put it another way, if Florida wasn’t so good this year, A&M probably finishes 11-1 and wins the division on the tiebreaker.

In the East, Georgia went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the middle classes and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. Are the Bulldogs in line for a national title game appearance because they’re great, or are they great because they’re in line to play for the title? Georgia’s second-best win this season came against Vanderbilt. Meanwhile, Florida went 3-1 against the First Class, 2-0 against the middle classes and 2-0 against the Bottom Class. Which performance is more impressive?

Since the winner of the SEC Championship Game will end the season going 2-1 against the First Class of the conference, that does improve their resume. They’ll be a worthy participant in the title game, but it’s easy to argue that if the schedule had been arranged differently, so would have Texas A&M, Florida, LSU, or USC.

Here are the week 13 college football SRS Ratings:

Oregon jumps to #1 fresh off of a blowout win in Corvalis against Orego State. Texas A&M, Kansas State, and Florida are all barely ahead of undefeated Notre Dame, too. Remember, the SRS ratings would barely change if Pittsburgh could have kicked a field goal in South Bend, but the perception of the Fighting Irish would be dramatically different. The SRS is forward-looking, and while it doesn’t hate Notre Dame, it basically ranks them on the same level with some excellent 11-1 teams. Notre Dame certainly isn’t a fraud, but they will legitimately be underdogs against Alabama. If anything, the SRS likes Notre Dame more than the public, as the early reports indicate a 9.5-point spread against Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game, versus the 7-point margin the SRS would implement. Right now Georgia is projected as a 1.5-point favorite against the Fighting Irish.

The week 13 results: