I know I might be a little biased about this topic. I’m from New Orleans and grew up on a steady diet of LSU football with a side dish of the other Southeastern Conference competitors. I have long borne witness to the power of the SEC, and when the conference claimed the last six national titles, the rest of the country also took notice. SEC squads have beaten the best of the Pac-10, Big Ten and Big 12 on college football’s grandest stage.
You may cheer for Oregon’s or West Virginia’s high-octane spread offenses, or the pro-style polish of South Carolina’s attack, but the SEC’s smash-mouth running games and suffocating defenses have always appealed to me. The combination of speed, athleticism and power is unmatched anywhere else in college football. As Cavalier Daily columnist Matt Comey wrote last week, it is preposterous to assume any college team could legitimately compete with an NFL one. But if I had to pick a college squad to try, it’d be one from down South.
Yet everything has been thrown out of whack now that Alabama, the conference’s presumed title favorite, fell to Texas A&M and its sensational quarterback Johnny Manziel Saturday.
That loss fueled a growing contingent of SEC haters. Michael Wilbon of “Pardon the Interruption” fame has taken every possible chance to tell his viewers how overrated the SEC is this year. ESPN college football writer Adam Rittenberg said Sunday evening that Nov. 10 – the day Alabama lost – might be “the day the SEC dynasty died.”
To an extent, they’re right. Championships are a common measuring stick, and with just two regular-season weeks left, it appears the SEC will not send a representative to the BCS National Championship Game. Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame all remain unbeaten, and at least two of those teams will likely have to stumble for a one-loss SEC team to earn a title berth.
But the rumors of the SEC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
One of Wilbon’s biggest criticisms of the SEC this season has been that the conference has one or two elite programs but lacks depth. Michael, have you seen the latest BCS standings? K-State, Oregon, and Notre Dame may occupy the top spots, but Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina fill slots four through nine. By my count, that’s six SEC squads among the country’s top 10, whereas no other conference even has a second top-10 team. Plenty of conferences have lots of fairly good teams, but show me another with such elite depth and we can talk.
The common counterargument to the rankings is that polls overrate the SEC based on conference reputation. That could be the case, except that the various computer systems that make up one-third of the BCS formula have deemed the Big 12, not the SEC, the strongest conference in football. So although human voters may exhibit some SEC bias, the computers’ pro-Big 12 bent make it at least a wash.
The SEC won’t attend this year’s championship game because the conference has evolved into a brutal war of attrition this year, a kind of mutually assured destruction that has inadvertently taken the entire conference out of contention. Let’s look at those six ranked SEC teams. All nine of the total losses by Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina this season have come against each other, most of them by close margins.
Some might see this as an indicator that the SEC lacks a truly elite team that can rise above the rest. But I see a conference so competitive that it’s practically impossible to escape unscathed. If a team makes it through an SEC schedule with just one loss, it deserves to at least be considered for a championship opportunity — it may ultimately defer to other undefeated teams, but it should be considered nonetheless.
And that’s just this year. Fair warning to the Oregons and the K-States out there — the SEC is reloading. Eight of Rivals.com’s top 15 recruiting classes for next year hail from the SEC, and that includes Auburn and Vanderbilt, which have struggled this year. Not only are the top teams pulling in top recruits to replace the stars that do depart, but even the lesser-renowned teams have inked high-profile newcomers to boost their programs.
There probably won’t be an SEC team in the national championship game this year. I can accept that. It might even be good for the sport to have a little variety to keep things interesting. Oregon, K-State and Notre Dame, good luck to you, and congratulations in advance if you win out and claim the crystal football.
But when the playoff system is finally implemented, and we are free of the tyrannical BCS formula, look out. In the words of LL Cool J, if the SEC reasserts its dominance next year, “Don’t call it a comeback.”
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