FAYETTEVILLE - This is the time of year for one of the most frequent debates in college baseball.

Is the SEC or the Pacific-10 the nation's best college baseball conference ?

No question it will be a hot topic this week with NCAA Tournament bids going out Monday, and it will be interesting to see how the bids will shake out for at-large teams in the field.

The SEC usually receives more bids than the Pacific-10, which is good news for a bubble team like Arkansas, but the Pacific-10 also has its share of worthy candidates this year in UCLA, Oregon State and Southern California. All four can make a solid argument for getting in the field, but it isn't likely all four will make it.

UCLA, USC and Oregon State have a lot in common with Arkansas. They have strong overall Rating Percentage Index numbers that can't be ignored, but they also are hovering around the. 500 mark in conference. Arkansas also went 0-2 against the Pacific-10, losing two close games at then-No. 1 Arizona State in March.

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Each conference has presented its share of headaches for opponents in past NCAA Tournaments.

The SEC boasts more College World Series berths (34 ) since 1990, but four Pac-10 members - Arizona (1986 ), Stanford (1987, 1988 ), Southern California (1998 ) and Oregon State (2007, 2008 ) - have won national championships in the past 21 years.

Andy Lopez has a unique understanding of the similarities and differences among the conferences. He spent seven years as the coach of SEC member Florida, and for the past six years he's led Pacific-10 member Arizona. He said he believes the only difference between the leagues is the SEC's popularity, which has far better fan support and generally gets more media coverage.

"Because I've been in both worlds, I really do understand it now," Lopez said.

Still, it won't come down to just the Pacific-10 and the SEC. Parity is making it more difficult for the Pac-10 and SEC to dominate the selections as they have in the past. In fact, the Big West Conference, which is located in Arizona's back yard, could land as many as five bids this season.

Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said regardless of how his team stacks up with other SEC schools in the at-large pool, the Razorbacks will likely be tossed into a hat with perhaps Santa Clara, a member of the West Coast Conference.

"If you're just comparing us to some teams in our league, I guess you could say we'd have a good case there," Van Horn said. "I look at more on a national stage. Do they take us or take someone from a different region whose RPI is 70."

Santa Clara (33-21 ) can't match the Razorbacks' RPI, but the Broncos played a challenging schedule, collected some quality victories and played well late.

Santa Clara is definitely a threat to keep Arkansas at home, especially since the Broncos'conference has emerged as a top 10 RPI conference.

"In the WCC, there's been a huge, conscious effort to upgrade the schedule with strengthening our RPI as a conference and individually," said San Diego Coach Rich Hill, whose 11 th-ranked Toreros should make the NCAA Tournament even if they don't win this weekend's conference championship series against Pepperdine. "I have so high regard for the teams in the SEC. I know how good top to bottom that league is.

" Most of the time, their [number of bids ] are deserving."

No question Hill's conference and others are making up ground. Underrated leagues like the Big South and the Colonial can now get more than just their conference tournament champion in, which is cause for concern for some of the bigger, more established conferences that are used to getting the nod for atlarge selections.

"There are reasons why a couple of good teams are going to stay home this year," Lopez said. "There's always going to be someone left out, and it's going to make it extremely difficult on the committee. You only hope they're going to try to find the top 64 teams."