Welcome to the league that has better balance than Olga Korbut.

In the Southeastern Conference, the weak sisters look like Chyna, the former WWF freakess. Come tournament time Thursday in Atlanta, every favorite will feel insecure. No first-round or second-round game is a walk.

"I think it's gonna be crazy," Tennessee coach Buzz Peterson said.

In SEC play, there is one team at 12-4 (Alabama) and one at 4-12 (Auburn). The 10 teams outside the state of Alabama can all be crammed in between 10-6 and 6-10. Pete Rozelle, godfather of sporting parity, would love this league.

All of two teams -- LSU and Auburn -- are rated outside the top 66 in the RPI. From early January through early March, the games have been tighter than Britney's jeans. In fact, the biggest blowout of the past two weeks -- and one of the five biggest of the season -- came Sunday, when Mississippi pasted none other than league champion Alabama by 28.

Which could call into question the preparedness of the Crimson Tide to win this thing. Though it also could be argued that the game means little because they already had the league won by then.

"We didn't handle the situation," coach Mark Gottfried said. "I think with everything set, our guys relaxed a little bit."

Or as Tide guard Terrance Meade told the Birmingham News, "I believe we got a little bit of the big head."

The SEC West top seed won the overall league race by two games, are ranked in the Top 10, remain in the argument for a No. 1 NCAA seed and possess league Player of the Year Erwin Dudley. But one thing they don't possess is a lot of postseason experience, especially as the top dog.

Gottfried's three previous Alabama teams have never made an SEC semifinal, much less a final, much less won the tournament. Same at the top of the bracket on the other side. Georgia, the No. 1 seed from the Eastern Division, are 1-4 in the years since Tubby Smith left and are winless in the tourney under current coach Jim Harrick.

Contrast those two with Kentucky, No. 2 seed from the East, which has won 26 of its past 28 SEC tournament games and eight of the past 10 tourney titles. Fresh off their season sweep of Florida (by a total of five points), Team Turmoil might at last be rounding into form.

But if ever there were a year when it seems like what you did last year, last month or even last week might be meaningless, this is it. As the network folks say on election night, this one's too close to call.

Arkansas is the X Factor, playing with emotion channeled toward an empty seat on the bench in honor of fired coach Nolan Richardson. Tennessee scares people. Florida and Mississippi are NCAA Tournament locks who must try to win four games in four days. And don't forget about Mississippi State, somehow overlooked for much of this season.

"More than any other year, anything can happen in any given game," Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said. "... If you can get lucky and play against somebody you match up well with, anything can happen.

"The games have been almost ridiculously close."

We'll see whether that begets further close games in the Georgia Dome.

"We've got a great league because there isn't a whole lot of difference between 1 and 12," said Florida coach Billy Donovan. "We don't have any teams in our league that are head and shoulders above everyone else. I don't think the teams in the middle and bottom of the league have gotten enough respect as far as how good they really are."

Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com