I hope this is true. Look at what happened to the Big Ten in football... the SEC used to be significantly ahead, but not anymore.

But, the SEC, ACC and somewhat the Big 12 have the advantage of latitude. They get to train outdoors and stay home more often in the spring. The last Big Ten team to win a natty was Michigan - 21 years ago!

This site does a good job of showing where the conferences rank: https://www.warrennolan.com/softball/2025/rpi-conference

The SEC’s .6350 conference RPI dwarfs the ACC’s second-place .5809 — a gap of .054 points, which is roughly equivalent to the distance between 2nd and 4th place combined.