Before you read any more of this, know that the answer is “Watch the games.”
That’s the only thing that has to be mentioned regarding this whole idea of “SEC bias.”
They’re two words that really shouldn’t go together, like cigars and marathon running, Alabama and Auburn, shag carpeting and, well, anything.
For whatever reason the notion of SEC bias in college football has recently been gaining steam, as the rest of the country is obviously getting sick of seeing the conference dominate the sport.
The league has consistently been at the top of the recruiting rankings, won seven of the last eight national championships and routinely has the most players selected in the National Football League draft.
Five different SEC teams won a national title during the BCS era while the Big 12’s last championship was in 2005. The Pac-12’s only title of the BCS era was vacated. The Big Ten’s last crystal football was in 2002.
Conference records in BCS title games
| Conference | Record | Win Pct. |
|---|---|---|
| SEC | 9-2 | .818 |
| Big 12 | 2-5 | .286 |
| ACC | 2-2 | .500 |
| Big East | 1-2 | .333 |
| Big Ten | 1-2 | .333 |
| Pac-12 | 1-2* | .333 |
| Independent | 0-1 | .000 |
*USC vacated its win in the 2005 Orange Bowl.
The gap between the SEC and everyone else was already vast, but this season in particular seems to have been just a little too much for some people to take. After Alabama and LSU played for the crystal football at the end of the 2011 season, they believed a playoff would make a repeat of that more difficult.
Instead, the initial rankings were dominated by the SEC West with: 1. Mississippi State, 3. Auburn, 4. Ole Miss, and 6. Alabama, with No. 11 Georgia in the East. It won’t end that way, of course, as the teams will knock each other off, but the reaction outside of the region was everything from outcry to lashing out.
This is what we call denial, by people who have obviously not been doing what was mentioned in the first line of this article, or paying attention to the league’s recent dominance.
So they mistakenly contend that the polls are biased even though the voters equally represent the various regions of the country.
They argue that the playoff selection committee is biased even though Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long is the only one on it from the SEC after former Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning took a leave of absence for a medical condition.
Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher even fanned the flames a little during a recent interview with WABM-TV in Birmingham, Ala., when he blamed all of the negative attention the Seminoles have been receiving on “One, ESPN has money in the SEC, and two, we were so dominant last year.”
Right, nobody jumped on Johnny Manziel last season when he did idiotic things, and ESPN made Jameis Winston steal those crab legs from a local grocery store (and everything else …).
I guess he also forgot that ESPN has a 15-year, $3.6 billion deal with the Atlantic Coast Conference, which helps pay for his lucrative salary.
Additionally, ESPN and Fox have a $3 billion deal with the Pac-12, and a $2.6 billion contract with the Big 12. It’s even paying the Big Ten $1 billion through 2016-17, and had the broadcast rights to 33 of last year’s 35 bowl games.
It also is in partnership with Texas for The Longhorn Network, but funny you don’t hear anyone claiming UT bias.
No one points out that CBS has the rights to the biggest SEC game of the week, or that the Mississippi schools are probably the last ones in the league that ESPN wants to see in the payoff due to neither school being part of a major television market.
No disrespect intended to Ole Miss or Mississippi State, which are having remarkable seasons and have earned everything they’ve accomplished so far, but if either makes the title game the ratings wouldn’t be nearly as good as say Notre Dame vs. Ohio State. There’s a lot more money to be made in the Midwest.
Rather, here’s an example of bias in the sport: If you go to the website for the College Football Hall of Fame and do a search for Notre Dame inductees, 49 names come up. If you do the same for Alabama, which has won the most national championships during the poll era, you get 20.
“Deal with it, they’re the best,” ESPN announcer Brent Musberger recently said of the SEC, and College GameDay host Chris Fowler called claims of ESPN’s SEC bias “stupid, uninformed stuff.”
I’ll throw in another word, “insulting.”
Christopher Walsh has covered Alabama football since 2004 and is the author of 19 books. In his free time, he writes about college football.
