Bret Bielema has shown he can coach a little bit. On Friday morning, the Illinois head coach showed he also has a pretty good sense of humor.
Earlier this week, legendary coach turned ESPN college football analyst Nick Saban went on the network’s morning show, Get Up, and he shared his opinion on the whole debate of who’s the better conference between the SEC and Big Ten.
Saban might be a little biased, from his history at Alabama and LSU, but he was speaking from his brain, and his brain said that just because the Big Ten has taken home the past 3 national championships, it doesn’t mean it has past the SEC for college football conference supremacy.
“Whoever wins the national championship doesn’t define who has the best conference,” Saban said on Thursday morning. “I think the best conference gets defined by how many good teams you have from top to bottom.”
Those were strong words, even from an icon like Saban, because of the big-time success the Big Ten has had recently. And on Friday morning, one of the current Big Ten head coaches chimed in with his 2 cents on the matter. Bielema isn’t a total Big Ten lifer, and he was the head coach at Arkansas from 2013-17, so he has some thick SEC ties. But he also has that sense of humor, and he gave Saban and legions of SEC fans a little bit of ribbing with a post on his social media.
“I agree with you coach and appreciate you bringing this up,” wrote Bielema on his post.
Bielema has a good memory, and he posted the score boxes of Illinois’ 2 most recent bowl games. They both happen to be victories, and they both happened to be against SEC teams. His Fighting Illini took down South Carolina, 21-17, in the Citrus Bowl to end the 2024 season. Then almost exactly a year later, Illinois took out Tennessee, 30-28, in the Music City Bowl.
Two bowl games between the SEC and Big Ten, two victories by the Big Ten team. Bielema’s team, the program he’s been coaching at since 2021. Bielema’s point was, the Big Ten has had some pretty good teams other than the ones who’ve won the national title the past 3 seasons.
All trolling aside in the month of July, the spots in this season’s College Football Playoff will be determined on the field, this fall, when Big Ten and SEC teams among the rest of college football will be going at it. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about which teams have the best shot to be in the Playoff come December:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
