The SEC stranglehold on the hearts and minds

Schnauzer

Pretty Sure You are Wrong
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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.
 

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.
 

I wouldn't have a problem with an 8 team playoff and the P5 conf champs are auto in.

The other three.... let silly rankings figure it out.
 

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.

Exactly. Self fullfilling prophecy.
 

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.

The BCS Committee does not meet until October, so the preseason rankings have been sorted out. Non-issue.
 


The BCS Committee does not meet until October, so the preseason rankings have been sorted out. Non-issue.

AP Rankings go the whole season, including preseason, and based on what we've seen they have at least some impact on where people end up ranked as the season goes on including the playoff committee.
 

AP Rankings go the whole season, including preseason, and based on what we've seen they have at least some impact on where people end up ranked as the season goes on including the playoff committee.

Very minimally, if it all. By the time the playoff field is announced things have sorted themselves out.

P5 Team with no losses? In. After that just sorting through the 1 loss teams based on the criteria (Champions of league, division, SOS, best wins, worse losses), not that hard. Again preseason ranking, non-issue. Just my opinion, man.
 

Notre Dame, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, ACC - Teams from the P5 all should play one inter-conference game during the season. It doesn't matter who as long as they are from another conference. Then, maybe then we have a measurement yard stick early in the season.
 

Oddly, the number one seed has never won the title.
 



The early polls set the table for the committee. That's how you end up with a couple 3 loss SEC teams in the top 10 at the end. They benefit from each other in SOS.
 

The early polls set the table for the committee. That's how you end up with a couple 3 loss SEC teams in the top 10 at the end. They benefit from each other in SOS.

SOS is based off of polls? Good to know.
 

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.

Agree 100%
 




A central pillar of the SEC argument is they get the best recruits ergo the best teams must follow. Of course, there is some moderately convincing evidence that some recruiting hotbeds are overrated (down south) while others are underrated (up north) based on NFL draftees, etc.

Clemson won national titles in 2016 and 2018. Their recruiting class rankings sort of upset that apple cart at least a little bit.

2018: 7th
2017: 16th
2016: 11th
2015: 9th
2014: 16th
2013: 15th
2012: 20th
 
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Connelly blends Rivals and 247 rankings to give Clemson a slightly higher 5 yr ranking of 9th. Bama of course was #1, Georgia #2, Ohio State #3, Florida State #4, USC #5. This tells me Clemson has overachieved their rankings by a fair amount, others have grossly underachieved, and Rivals apparently thought more of Clemson than the 247 composite.

https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...llege-football-recruiting-rankings-2018-class
 

Six team playoff, auto bids for P5 champs and highest ranked non-P5 conf member. Bye for top two seeds, 3v6 and 4v5 the week after conf champs games, on campus stadiums of 3 and 4. Then semi’s at big bowls as now.

Don’t know if TV will buy it or pay more for it, but it’s the easiest step from where we are now.
 

Six team playoff, auto bids for P5 champs and highest ranked non-P5 conf member. Bye for top two seeds, 3v6 and 4v5 the week after conf champs games, on campus stadiums of 3 and 4. Then semi’s at big bowls as now.

Don’t know if TV will buy it or pay more for it, but it’s the easiest step from where we are now.

TV will definitely buy it, my only concern is that it brings back the 2 vs 3 argument back from the BCS era (as a bye week is a huge advantage) - I'd rather go straight to 8 games with the first round being home games for the top 4 seeds. 5 P5 champs, 3 at large with an auto-bid for the highest G5 team if they are in the top 15.
 

TV will definitely buy it, my only concern is that it brings back the 2 vs 3 argument back from the BCS era (as a bye week is a huge advantage) - I'd rather go straight to 8 games with the first round being home games for the top 4 seeds. 5 P5 champs, 3 at large with an auto-bid for the highest G5 team if they are in the top 15.

I love that idea, and I think it's better than what I proposed .... the problem I think is that this is just too big of a jump. We've seen the history of major college football postseason has been smaller steps.

It took a baby step just to get the Big Ten and PAC-10 to bring their Rose Bowl into the Bowl Alliance. That formed the BCS, which finally guaranteed 1v2 rotating as one of the four big bowls. Then another baby step to make 1v2 a standalone bowl game, rotating at one of the four big bowl locations, and also got G5 teams a chance at access for the first time (Utah, TCU, etc.). Then another small step to get to our current CFP, four team bracket, semi's rotating as two of the now six big bowls.

So I just guess, pessimistically, that they won't be able to pull off going straight from four to eight. And a guaranteed spot for highest G5 champ (while Notre Dame doesn't have any hard guarantee) .... too many points of contention, too many competing agendas, too much fighting can sink a deal. That's why baby steps work better. My $0.02


But one thing for sure, after the last two years: Big Ten and PAC (probably should be Big XII too) will *demand* auto-bids for their champions to any kind of expanded bracket. That will be non-negotiable, or they walk away and take their Rose Bowl with them. Which, might not be the worst thing in the world with where this is clearly headed .... not sure if Big Ten and PAC schools, besides the elites, can compete financially with the top SEC, ACC, Texas/OU type programs when you're going to have to start paying players and such.
 
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The other issue with the SEC is the 8 game conference schedule.
SEC teams who go 0.500 in conference and sweep non-conference end up 8-4.
Big Ten, PAC12, and Big 12 who sweep non-conference and play 0.500 in conference play go 7.7-5.5

That's a big difference when looking at polls. 7 win teams don't get ranked. 8 win teams do.
Play that across your whole conference schedule, and a SEC or ACC schedule will look better across all 8 games because of this.

Take that and the fact Big Ten plays usually a 10th game against a Power 5, you are just going to end up with a few more losses across the conference.

Yes, the SEC is good, but not good enough to have 5 of the top 10 spots every year.
 

The other issue with the SEC is the 8 game conference schedule.
SEC teams who go 0.500 in conference and sweep non-conference end up 8-4.
Big Ten, PAC12, and Big 12 who sweep non-conference and play 0.500 in conference play go 7.7-5.5

That's a big difference when looking at polls. 7 win teams don't get ranked. 8 win teams do.
Play that across your whole conference schedule, and a SEC or ACC schedule will look better across all 8 games because of this.

Take that and the fact Big Ten plays usually a 10th game against a Power 5, you are just going to end up with a few more losses across the conference.

Yes, the SEC is good, but not good enough to have 5 of the top 10 spots every year.

As long as the AP/Playoff Committee don't punish them for their objectively poor schedules they have no incentive to change anything, and they get to play more home games for more $ and an even bigger scheduling advantage.
 

The SEC is undefeated in bowl games in which their team cared about. Every loss is because they didn't really care, their heart wasn't in it, etc.
 

Problem for SEC/ACC going to 9 conf games is that four from each have locked in, traditional inter-state rivalry games that add another P5 game to their schedule guaranteed every year. Louisville Kentucky, Georgia GT, FSU Florida, Clemson USC.

You can say what about Iowa Iowa St, and you can propose all kinds of reasonable things, like saying P5 (+ ND) must play 10 P5 games per year. That would still let each do 7 home games (two buy games at home plus 5/5). But so far that hasn’t been on the table. And so the SEC/ACC have pushed back and held at 8. That is an advantage, depending how they schedule nonconf.
 

The other issue with the SEC is the 8 game conference schedule.
SEC teams who go 0.500 in conference and sweep non-conference end up 8-4.
Big Ten, PAC12, and Big 12 who sweep non-conference and play 0.500 in conference play go 7.7-5.5

That's a big difference when looking at polls. 7 win teams don't get ranked. 8 win teams do.
Play that across your whole conference schedule, and a SEC or ACC schedule will look better across all 8 games because of this.

Take that and the fact Big Ten plays usually a 10th game against a Power 5, you are just going to end up with a few more losses across the conference.

Yes, the SEC is good, but not good enough to have 5 of the top 10 spots every year.

The Big 10, Pac 12 & Big 12 could solve the problem by going back to 8 games if they so choose. Nobody forced the Conferences to go to 9.
 

The SEC is undefeated in bowl games in which their team cared about. Every loss is because they didn't really care, their heart wasn't in it, etc.

I was tweeting about this topic yesterday and an SEC fan brought up Auburn's win over Purdue as evidence why the SEC should have 5 of the top 10 rankings going into next season. After going .500 in the bowl season, the Auburn/Purdue game was apparently the only one this guy remembered. And, the SEC propaganda is so common even people in B1G country start believing it. I saw a post here on GH explaining an SEC loss in a NEW YEARS SIX bowl was because the SEC team didn't care.

The classic example of having it both ways.
 

The Big 10, Pac 12 & Big 12 could solve the problem by going back to 8 games if they so choose. Nobody forced the Conferences to go to 9.

My overlying point is that this affects polls and computer rankings.

You have a closed set of data guarranteed to have their majority of games against opponents who place near 0.500 with final records. You have that across 9 of your games where the results are zero sum.

It affects your team negatively in the following ways.
1. Additional possible loss on your record.
2. 75% of your schedule teams also perform a half game weaker. If your non-conf includes a team from Big 12 or Pac12, this is further exemplified
3. Computer polls and human voters look at 7-5 team differently than 8-4 teams. An additional win usually by most polls and most computer rankings makes you "better".

Take the bias of the pre-season polls, then marry up the idea that LSU, Florida, or Miss St's losses came against other teams that were 9-3, 8-4, and 6-6 (say TX A&M, Auburn, South Carolina. That looks much better than a Northwestern, Michigan State, or Minnesota who have losses against a 8-4 Penn State, and 7-5 Wisconsin, and a 5-7 Maryland
 

I was tweeting about this topic yesterday and an SEC fan brought up Auburn's win over Purdue as evidence why the SEC should have 5 of the top 10 rankings going into next season. After going .500 in the bowl season, the Auburn/Purdue game was apparently the only one this guy remembered. And, the SEC propaganda is so common even people in B1G country start believing it. I saw a post here on GH explaining an SEC loss in a NEW YEARS SIX bowl was because the SEC team didn't care.

The classic example of having it both ways.

If the SEC was half as good as these SEC fans believe, each game they play should be a win by 20-30 points. That should be consistent throughout.

Granted bowl matchups seldom are best vs best, 2nd best vs 2nd best, etc. But if they really feel they should have 5 of the top 10 spots, they should be winning the majority of their bowl games, and most by 20 points.
 

My overlying point is that this affects polls and computer rankings.

You have a closed set of data guarranteed to have their majority of games against opponents who place near 0.500 with final records. You have that across 9 of your games where the results are zero sum.

It affects your team negatively in the following ways.
1. Additional possible loss on your record.
2. 75% of your schedule teams also perform a half game weaker. If your non-conf includes a team from Big 12 or Pac12, this is further exemplified
3. Computer polls and human voters look at 7-5 team differently than 8-4 teams. An additional win usually by most polls and most computer rankings makes you "better".

Take the bias of the pre-season polls, then marry up the idea that LSU, Florida, or Miss St's losses came against other teams that were 9-3, 8-4, and 6-6 (say TX A&M, Auburn, South Carolina. That looks much better than a Northwestern, Michigan State, or Minnesota who have losses against a 8-4 Penn State, and 7-5 Wisconsin, and a 5-7 Maryland

I totally get that playing a 9th game can likely impact negatively a teams ability to get into the playoff. It assures 7 more losses for the conference, lowering SOS etc. I get tired of the whining that the SEC only plays 8 so it props them up. Big 10 can go back to 8 if Jim Delaney wants to.
 

Can’t go back to 8 conf games from 9. That cat is out of the bag and run over. 9 conf games means you have more conf games to sell to TV networks. The conf games are the valuable one and the one the confs for sure control the rights to.

If the go back to 8, the TV contracts would have to be renegotiated and likely sell for far less.

If anything, think they should go to 10. Gives 5/5 every year, instead of 4/5 every other year. Two G5 buy games to get guaranteed seven home games.
 

Can’t go back to 8 conf games from 9. That cat is out of the bag and run over. 9 conf games means you have more conf games to sell to TV networks. The conf games are the valuable one and the one the confs for sure control the rights to.

If the go back to 8, the TV contracts would have to be renegotiated and likely sell for far less.

If anything, think they should go to 10. Gives 5/5 every year, instead of 4/5 every other year. Two G5 buy games to get guaranteed seven home games.

Not sure the TV contracts would go down, as there could be 7 more home games to sell. Even so that's fine, keep it at 9, enjoy the extra cash and don't whine about another conference only playing 8 games.

Not say you are whining about it but others here and Barry Alvarez have complained about it.

Personally, I like the 9 games. 10 would be even better, and I don't care about the ramifications of making Big 10 teams making the BCS Playoffs.

It would also mean fewer teams getting 6 wins to be Bowl eligible. Sobeit.
 

I was tweeting about this topic yesterday and an SEC fan brought up Auburn's win over Purdue as evidence why the SEC should have 5 of the top 10 rankings going into next season. After going .500 in the bowl season, the Auburn/Purdue game was apparently the only one this guy remembered. And, the SEC propaganda is so common even people in B1G country start believing it. I saw a post here on GH explaining an SEC loss in a NEW YEARS SIX bowl was because the SEC team didn't care.

The classic example of having it both ways.

You saw it with UCF the past two years. Their win over Auburn wasn't a big deal because Auburn had nothing to play for. Now LSU beats them and it proves UCF can't play with the big boys.

I'm still amazed at the whole concept of "SEC fans". I'm a Gophers fan and I like to see the Big Ten do well but I'm never going to bang my chest because Ohio St or Michigan do well.
 




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