This chart does a really good job of showing the relative strength and parity of each conference. Vertical is a power rating. Horizontal is meaningless, it just spreads out each conference evenly with a little jitter to avoid overlaps. You can see Ohio State in the top left to Oklahoma State in the bottom right.
The bold black lines are how I generally group teams to give a brief look at resume. Above the first black line are contenders. Obviously one team is favored when they play each other but it's not generally considered an upset to lose against these teams. I guess it's the "good loss" category. For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference are Miami, Utah, Oregon, and Oklahoma.
The lower bold black line is basically the Mendoza line of college football. Teams above are upset watch teams, and below the black line generally have no chance. Dangerous teams who are not good losses, but still possible upsets. This year it just happens to be exactly the top 40 teams. For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference - teams with the slightest chance to upset a contender - are Cincy, Virginia, Nebraska, and Florida. And just below - teams just outside reach of an upset - are Arizona State (who actually did beat Tech this year), Clemson, Northwestern.
For SOS, a good quick comparison is to look with is how many teams there are in each group to play:
Texas: 4+5 (#1 SOS in my model when actually calculated out)
Notre Dame: 2+3 (#34 SOS)
TxTech: 1+1 (#50 SOS)
So for the SEC: this is the first year I've ever seen (going back over 20 years) an entire conference above the Mendoza line. In fact, I believe in the "no bad teams" B12 year that 4 teams were still below this line. Which means, for this one year, the SEC is exactly what the pundits have been wishing it were for 2 decades: a conference where a single bad game on any Saturday of the season actually does sink the boat.