After years of being berated by Big 12 and Big Ten fans for their wimpy eight game conference schedule, the SEC finally decided to man up and play nine conference games beginning next season. This leaves the ACC as the only power conference playing eight league games. The ACC is officially the weakling of the power four.
The SEC will be maintaining its requirement that all schools play at least one non-conference power opponent every season, meaning that every SEC school will play a total of ten games against teams from power conferences. The exception would be if an SEC team plays Notre Dame, who would count as a power opponent.
It took 33 years of only playing 8 conference games for the SEC to put on their big boy pants. Gone are the days of LSU playing against an FCS squad nobody has ever heard of in the middle of November. We’ll get good football every weekend from the league as the playoff race nears its apex.
The teams in the SEC that actually belong in the playoff conversation will be benefited by this, as they’ll have a far more comparable schedule to the Big Ten and Big 12. Any analyst worth their salt has been well aware that the nonsense about the SEC being the toughest league wasn’t even provable without a nine game schedule.
It also means that every year, half of the SEC schools will take an additional loss than they otherwise would have. It will help to weed out schools from the playoff race that are really pretenders. If we’re looking at last year, we’re referring to Bama, South Carolina, and especially Ole Miss.
Let’s be real: No amount of Lane Kiffin tweets would have made last year’s Ole Miss team worthy of being in the playoff.
As less SEC teams contend for the coveted at-large spots in the playoff, the gap will inevitably be filled by teams that actually belong there. For example, from a résumé standpoint, BYU would have been an obvious choice last season.
Instead, since ESPN has such sweeping influence over the public narratives, the SEC, and the playoff itself, they were actually able to convince some people that Alabama belonged in the playoff last year. We can all thank Michigan for shutting the talking heads up for a little while.
The people at ESPN who signed off on the media deal are probably crying over the announcement. It’s less games in total that the network will control, which means less eyeballs. It means that one additional team every year has to play against Texas, or Georgia, or Tennessee, potentially knocking their own asset out of the playoff race.
More losses per team in the league is going to be a major step in the direction of restoring the balance between leagues. No more fabricated narrative of SEC superiority when half the league has an additional loss. It will keep two or three teams from being ranked per year. A 9-3 SEC team will be comparable to a 9-3 Big Ten team, not an 8-4 Big Ten team.
Now go ahead, crack a beer, enjoy the fact that college football is moving in the right direction, and maybe point and laugh at how pitiful the ACC is.
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