It feels like, once a year, as we get closer to the CFP selection committee making decisions about who will be in and who will be out, a discussion arises: Do SEC teams receive preferential treatment? I would argue yes, they do. But I would also say that it is warranted.
Let me be clear, the SEC is the best conference in football, both because of the high-end talent they have and the depth of talent across the conference. This year in the SEC, there are 7-10 teams in the conference that could have easily contended for a spot in the college football playoff. Even when you look beyond those teams, schools like South Carolina, Auburn, Arkansas, and Florida are not teams you can expect to roll over. This depth of talent results in SEC teams across the board having much more difficult conference schedules than other teams across the NCAA.
I also find it essential to acknowledge that top programs at other schools are more than capable of competing with SEC teams. But my argument is that the RESUME of an SEC school carries significantly more weight. There is no doubt that schools like Ohio State, Oregon, Texas Tech, and Indiana are capable of competing with SEC teams and would likely outperform some of them. But as it stands today, and for the last 20+ years, 10 SEC wins mean a lot more to me than 10 wins anywhere else.
I think it is pretty evident that the top two conferences are the SEC and the Big 10, as they host most of college football’s powerhouses. This is not to say that the ACC and Big 12 don’t have talented teams, but I think it is relatively straightforward that they don’t have the powerhouse teams or the depth you see in the SEC.
Now, when we compare the Big 10 schools to the SEC, there is no doubt that the top teams like Ohio State and Oregon are more than capable of holding their own. But it is when we start looking at the bottom of the Big 10 that you see the conference’s weaknesses and why Big 10 wins mean slightly less. Schools like Maryland (ouch), Purdue, Michigan State, and others clearly do not have what it takes to compete in the SEC, even against the conference’s worst teams.
Now I already know what the response to this is going to be, and here come all the “another hypothetical win for the SEC” people yelling on the internet. But the fact of the matter is, there is nowhere near enough sample size to compare how the conferences play against each other, which is why “hypotheticals” are all we have to go off of. It is also very clear that talent levels, especially in the trenches, are just better across the SEC.
Effectively, what I am saying is that to win 10 games in the SEC, you likely have to be in dogfights for at least 7-8 of them. In the Big 10, you may have 3-4 tough matchups, but you also will have several blowout wins in a year, which devalues some of those wins. This is part of what makes it very hard to select which college football teams are the best, as their schedules differ significantly and their W-L records do not carry the same weight.
This becomes just that much harder when you schedule a school like Texas to play Ohio State in week one, knowing they also have to face one of the most challenging schedules in college football. If teams are punished equally for losses, regardless of opponent, SEC teams will schedule easier out-of-conference games, significantly reducing competition in early-season games.
To summarize, yes, on average, SEC schools have better football programs than all other conferences, and yes, their wins should mean more on selection day. The fact of the matter is, it would be bad for everyone in college football if the selection committee did not value SEC wins over other wins, and they MUST take strength of schedule into account. At the end of the day, the College Football Playoff has a selection committee for a reason… To determine who the best teams are in college football, they cannot do so if they have to value all wins equally, regardless of conference schedule.
