The SEC wrapped up what’s known yearly as cupcake week this past weekend with most of the top teams in the conference taking on lesser opponents ahead of rivalry week.

Despite having run through a gauntlet of a schedule in the best conference in America ahead of one final showdown next week for most teams, the conference receives significant amounts of criticism at this point of the year, and some of it even comes from their own fanbase,

This week though, that criticism came from a coach in a rival conference, and after his team’s big ranked victory over USC — their first of the season — Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning did not hold back when comparing the Big 10 to the SEC.

“All that we’re worried about is playing the teams that we play and doing the job we need to do and we did that job today,” Lanning began when asked how his team should be viewed by the College Football Playoff committee at this point in the year. “This conference is a really good conference. It’s competitive. We didn’t play Chattanooga State today like some other places. We competed. It’s tough playing nine conference games, it’s tough playing in this league and we got to take advantage of playing a really good team today and attacking that.”

Lanning, who is the former defensive coordinator at Georgia, likely knows that his implying that the Big 10 is a more difficult conference than the SEC is absurd — but at this point in the year with fates left up to the committee, coaches will say whatever they have to in order to get their team in.

This is no different than any other plea from a coach at this point in the year, but one of the best coaches in the nation taking a shot at his former conference feels notable.

Time will tell if Lanning is eventually able to back his claims up.