No, the SEC Isn’t Better Than Everyone Else

Regardless of what some in the media say, the SEC is not heads and shoulders above everyone else. The league has some great teams and some not-so-great teams.

Just like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong: the SEC is a strong conference. Alabama finished the 2018 regular season as the No. 1 team in the country. Georgia had a great year and nearly defeated the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. Similarly, LSU, Florida, and Kentucky all finished the year in the Top 11 of the Coaches Poll after posting impressive victories in their respective bowl games.

While those numbers prove that the SEC had some strong teams at the top, they don’t show that the league is that much better than anyone else. The SEC went a pedestrian 6-6 in the postseason, including blowout losses to Clemson and Virginia. The conference didn’t fare much better against the Big 12, dropping contests to 6-6 Baylor, 6-6 Oklahoma State, and a shocking Sugar Bowl loss to Texas.

Does that sound like a league that’s a cut above the rest?

No.

At this point, I can hear the SEC fans chiming in with the standard, “Those games don’t mean anything because we didn’t have anything to play for” argument. I know it’s coming because that’s all I heard after Utah throttled Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in 2009.

That logic doesn’t really hold water. Anyone who’s talked to Nick Saban for longer than five minutes knows that he always has his team ready to play, especially with more than one week to prepare.

Even if – and it’s a Christian Wilkins-sized if – we wanted to believe that reasoning (spoiler alert: I don’t), it’s still tough to assert that the conference is so much better than everyone else. Arkansas (2-10) dropped two games to “Group of Five” opponents, including an embarrassing home loss to North Texas. Likewise, Tennessee got throttled by West Virginia to open the 2018 campaign, yet posted a win over Kentucky later in the year, suggesting that the gap between the Big 12 and the SEC wasn’t as big as the media wanted us to think it was.

Texas’ Sugar Bowl win over Georgia reaffirmed that point.

So much for the, “Oklahoma would have five losses in the SEC, so they don’t belong in the College Football Playoff” argument.

In other words: there’s no way to prove whether Conference A is better than Conference B. While it’s certainly fun to debate, it’s impossible to know for sure.

Let’s hope that the people that promote the “It’s the SEC’s world and we’re all just living in it” narrative will give it a rest and focus on something that actually matters.

Terry Johnson is a Contributor to the All Sports Discussion. He is a member of the Football Writers Association of America and the National Football Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @TerryPJohnson

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