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The SEC is in a lose-lose situation no matter who wins or how they win in Atlanta.
After the conference championship game is over on Saturday, you can bet the best conference in college football will be dragged through the fans’ and the media’s mercurial mud in the 17 or so hours between the clock hitting zeroes and when the College Football Playoff committee chooses its four teams. Here are the possible outcomes:
-If Alabama crushes Florida, it will only feed the perception of how terrible half of the SEC is.
-If the mighty Crimson Tide scrapes by against the middling Gators, the legitimacy of the entire conference will be questioned.
-If Florida somehow pulls off the biggest upset in SEC title game history, oh boy, get ready for the headlines that proclaim the death of two dynasties: Alabama’s (for the fifth time?) and the SEC’s.
Whatever happens, the league won’t save face until it wins that big, golden waffle cone, tulip, megaphone, telescope, lipstick tube, whatever that new trophy is supposed to be that goes to the national champion on Jan. 11.
There’s one interesting thing about the criticism that the SEC always seems to get: People rarely compare it to anything else, only to itself.
A good example of this trend came this week when Ohio State junior receiver Michael Thomas posted this on Twitter before later deleting it:
First of all, these aren’t even the most recent Associated Press Top 25 rankings. Second of all, if he were to stop and consider Ohio State’s schedule and stack it up to Alabama’s, he would’ve seen that the Tide has actually faced more teams currently ranked in the AP Poll (three) than his own Buckeyes have (two). Plus, Alabama will be facing a fourth on Saturday while his team watches.
In that case, a comparison has to be made.
Often times, you’ll hear a media talking head or a fan outside of the Southeast spend every breath trying to take the SEC down a few pegs, denouncing it as the best league or the deepest league. However, when they’re asked to give their opinion on what is the best league or deepest league, they’re stumped or they make a case for Thomas’ Big Ten brethren this season.
While the SEC East gets all the negative attention, the Big Ten West gets a pass despite the majority of its division not going bowling this season either (both divisions have four of seven teams not bowl-eligible). It’s also a big reason why Iowa (12-0) is somehow still unbeaten.
And while the SEC has three teams ranked among the top 10 in strength of schedule, the Big Ten only has one team ranked inside the top 40 (Minnesota at 27th).
The tendency to not compare somewhat makes sense. For the SEC, that’s life at the top of the college football mountain, where only the SEC can kick itself off.
Heck, even if Alabama wins it all, be ready for those that will say the conference is top-heavy and Alabama carries the “dead weight” of the rest of the league. Never mind the fact that four different SEC schools took their turn in raising that crystal ball during the very recent seven-year reign.
Four.
Since the turn of the century, only one other conference has even had two schools reach the summit, and that’s the Big 12 (Oklahoma in 2000, Texas in 2005).
Just be ready because the SEC degradation will reach its peak this weekend, and the two schools that will take the field in Atlanta can’t do anything about that.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
