There are numerous methods to evaluate power in college football. You can immerse yourself in the storm, spending 14 grand Saturdays watching the influx of games on TV, and form an opinion. You can wait until it passes, relying on statistical evaluations made by mathematicians such as Jeff Sagarin or various computer formulas employed by the Bowl Championship Series.

Perhaps the best way is watching the storm’s source. One measure feels no bias, doesn’t have an alma mater and knows only basic math. It’s money, and the recent 15-year, $2.25 billion payout by ESPN to the Southeastern Conference shows us exactly where the power in college football resides.

The ESPN deal, coupled with the $55 million over 15 years the conference will receive from CBS, means the SEC will reel in about $205 million annually from TV football deals until 2025. Money has spoken, and the SEC is college football’s best investment.

“It was not that hard to contemplate, given the fact we’ve been in college sports as part of our DNA for 29 years,” said John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content. “It’s not hard to think we’d want to be in it given the quality of the Southeastern Conference’s sports overall for the next 15 years.”

National championship trophies and Sagarin’s ratings suggest the SEC established itself as the nation’s most powerful league starting in 2006, setting itself up for a major TV deal.

“The SEC’s last two years were as good of a run as I can remember in all my years of college football,” ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit said. “And now we’re headed into this third year, and it might even get better.”

Which prompts this question: Will the SEC in 2008 be the greatest conference in the history of college football?

The arguments supporting such a claim, no matter how you view the storm of college football, are more numerous than the games ESPN will televise. Ask Florida’s Urban Meyer, who saw all the bling in the coaches’ room at the SEC’s spring meetings and immediately reported back to his staff.

“I don’t get in awe very much,” Meyer said, “but I was then.”

Five of the 12 coaches owned national championship rings. A sixth, Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville, finished the 2004 season undefeated but didn’t get a chance to claim such jewelry. Eight have won BCS bowl games. Only one coach, Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson, had never experienced winning a bowl game. But he led Furman to the I-AA national championship in Chattanooga. Two coaches, Bobby Petrino and Steve Spurrier, left NFL jobs for the SEC.

They all are given extravagant facilities, excessive recruiting budgets and, in the words of Kentucky’s Rich Brooks, “crazy” money. Not counting Vanderbilt, a private institution which doesn’t release salaries, Brooks is the lowest-paid SEC coach at $1.1 million. To compare, five of the Big 12 head coaches will make no more than that this year. Six of the highest-paid college coaches in the country are in the SEC.

“It’s a little shocking to me that I make what I make,” Brooks said. “It’s even more shocking when I see what other people are making. Is it a little out of balance? Yeah, I think it is.”

This doesn’t necessarily make the SEC, which boasted the nation’s top two teams in the final AP poll last year, the best conference ever. But most, if not all, of the conferences in the old days of football, before the 85-scholarship limit, are probably out of contention.

In those days, the great teams stockpiled all the talent and pounded on the little guy. Nine teams didn’t consider themselves conference title contenders, which is what Meyer sees in the SEC this year.

“The blowouts back when I was playing — when the game was over at halftime, 35-0, you sit over there and drink water and eat popcorn the rest of the game — those days are over,” said Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom, a former Alabama center.

The Big Ten in 1999, according to Sagarin’s ratings starting in 1998, is the only conference that exceeded what the SEC did the last two seasons. In 1999, the Big Ten had four teams in the top 11 and seven earned spots in the final poll. But Florida State won the national title.

In this year’s AP preseason poll, four SEC teams are ranked in the top 10. Six are in the Top 25, and South Carolina fell one vote shy.

“You look at the athletic directors, the chancellors and the tools they’ve given us, the facilities,” Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt said. “It’s the greatest conference in America. The NFL people seem to come to the SEC first.”

The next 14 Saturdays, the college football storm, will tell us if this year’s SEC is the best conference we’ve ever seen. But the question will never go away because of that unfailing measure: money.

The recent TV contracts, nearly triple what the SEC is making under the current deals, will pour even more cash into the 12 schools. ESPN will give the league more exposure and a brand name recruits will easily remember: the SEC on ESPN.

The talent, the facilities, the budgets and the money waved at coaches will only increase.

“We’re paid in a system where it’s reflective of capitalism and democracy that allows people to ascend,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “I recognize that I’m highly paid. I’m embarrassed by it. If I had my father alive, he’d say, ‘You’re not worth it.’

“I’d say he’s right.”