While we like to give ESPN a hard time, I do want to give them credit here on their pro B1G piece. Obviously they are more giving credit to MSU and OSU, but they even admit that having a top heavy conference is what the SEC did during the BCS.
During that conference's amazing run of seven consecutive BCS titles, its model was essentially the same. Each season typically featured two dominant teams, Alabama and someone else.
It does seem slightly ironic that they only point to the SEC's "dominance" once they are no longer the conference, but still a nice article to see.