Schnauzer
Pretty Sure You are Wrong
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2009
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- 6,362
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First, let me just get this out of the way so there is no misunderstanding: I feel as though Alabama has been on an amazing run and deserve their place among the great college football dynasty programs. And, it is reasonable to argue the SEC has been college football's best conference for a while now.
With that said, and assuming these things to be true, it is the basis of something very annoying that has happened to my favorite sport. These assumptions have been the basis of artificially raising the SEC to a level far beyond reality - and it is extremely frustrating. ESPN has taken these things and combined them with their own financial interests and artifically pumped up the league to a point where it bends opinions and often leaves a boring college football playoff situation.
Bowl games and head to head results prove year after year that the Power 5 conferences all ebb and flow but in general are very close to one another. There just isn't a big enough difference to discount ANY of them. Yet the ESPN propaganda parade injects an eternal "sec sec sec" whisper in everyone's ears, resulting in a never ending cycle where SEC teams start the season out with artificially high rankings, play a limited number of noncon games against other Power 5 foes, play only 8 conference games, and ensure that even conference losses do not hurt their standing much because they are often against "ranked teams"
Just today ESPN announced their "too early" rankings for the 2019 season. You guessed it: 2 of the top 4 and 5 of the top 10 are SEC schools, right after yet another bowl season hinted at far more parity than that among the Power 5.
We spent years of BCS where the two team tournament basically boiled down to half the bracket being the SEC and the other half of the bracket being the rest of the country, combined. The final slap in the face was the year they managed to pit two SEC teams against each other in the championship. After a brief tilt toward common sense when the 4 team playoff began, we again now see situations where half the field is SEC teams and this year we had what became a 3 loss non-conference winning Georgia team slotted ahead of a one loss Power 5 conference champion in the form of Ohio State.
This is why I have become a broken record: I don't care how many teams you put into a playoff, but please please please make ONE stipulation: anyone in the playoff must be a conference champion (yes, Notre Dame - just join a conference already). Outside of perhaps some unfair seeding, it would totally remove ESPN and much OPINION from determining a champion. Get as much opinion out of it as possible because things like ESPN are unfairly tilting opinion.
With that said, and assuming these things to be true, it is the basis of something very annoying that has happened to my favorite sport. These assumptions have been the basis of artificially raising the SEC to a level far beyond reality - and it is extremely frustrating. ESPN has taken these things and combined them with their own financial interests and artifically pumped up the league to a point where it bends opinions and often leaves a boring college football playoff situation.
Bowl games and head to head results prove year after year that the Power 5 conferences all ebb and flow but in general are very close to one another. There just isn't a big enough difference to discount ANY of them. Yet the ESPN propaganda parade injects an eternal "sec sec sec" whisper in everyone's ears, resulting in a never ending cycle where SEC teams start the season out with artificially high rankings, play a limited number of noncon games against other Power 5 foes, play only 8 conference games, and ensure that even conference losses do not hurt their standing much because they are often against "ranked teams"
Just today ESPN announced their "too early" rankings for the 2019 season. You guessed it: 2 of the top 4 and 5 of the top 10 are SEC schools, right after yet another bowl season hinted at far more parity than that among the Power 5.
We spent years of BCS where the two team tournament basically boiled down to half the bracket being the SEC and the other half of the bracket being the rest of the country, combined. The final slap in the face was the year they managed to pit two SEC teams against each other in the championship. After a brief tilt toward common sense when the 4 team playoff began, we again now see situations where half the field is SEC teams and this year we had what became a 3 loss non-conference winning Georgia team slotted ahead of a one loss Power 5 conference champion in the form of Ohio State.
This is why I have become a broken record: I don't care how many teams you put into a playoff, but please please please make ONE stipulation: anyone in the playoff must be a conference champion (yes, Notre Dame - just join a conference already). Outside of perhaps some unfair seeding, it would totally remove ESPN and much OPINION from determining a champion. Get as much opinion out of it as possible because things like ESPN are unfairly tilting opinion.