CFP Exposed Overrated SEC

Never did we say that the SEC was a bad conference. Merely that they were vastly overrated, the product of sports media overhype mixed with the skilled art of avoiding the top competition from the other Power 5 conferences. For years we have been told they are great because they have to play each other and that they didn’t need to prove anything by playing the other conference’s big boys on the block. For years we witnessed a corrupted BCS bowl system pair SEC teams with much inferior competition, creating mismatches that assured the SEC the best conference bowl records year after year.

The so-highly regarded SEC West was 2-5 in bowls this season… in fact, they went 0-4 against 10 win teams. And for the first time in nearly a decade, an undeserving SEC champion hasn’t been ramrodded into the national championship game behind the push of a manipulative ESPN-led media propaganda parade. And it happened in the first year of the college football playoffs, the first year that SEC teams had to prove they belonged at the top before getting a shot at all the marbles.

The committee did give Alabama the (unearned) number one seed in what can only be described as a desperate attempt to give them the easiest path to the title (the closest proximity of any of the four teams to their game site to ensure easy travelling for their fans coupled with the matchup with a four seed, presumably the easiest team of the four).

This SEC bowl season, the conference was solidly favored in 9 of their 12 games. And all but one of their ranked teams were playing other teams they were solidly favored to beat, with that one exception being TCU-Ole Miss. In a matchup of 6 (TCU) versus 9 (Ole Miss), you would expect the game to be a good one, especially if the lower ranked team is in the all powerful SEC West! Well, how does 42-3 taste, chanters? Crazy fact is, TCU had the 42 in just three quarters of play, calling off the dogs in the final quarter to leave an ounce of dignity for the beaten Rebels to crawl away with. And if that game wasn’t revealing enough, Mississippi State got trucked by 15 points by the second best team in the ACC. Georgia Tech, the champ of the supposedly weakest division in all of college football (ACC Coastal), a same team that lost to DUKE, whipped Miss State like a red-headed step-child. Couple this with the Wisconsin victory over Auburn and the Notre Dame win over LSU, and it becomes very clear that the SEC West was the paper tiger that we told you all season they were.

[Full article here]

 

Good read! And something many of us have been saying for years. The SEC is vary overrated and the way their conference rigs match ups is now well known. Thanks for posting.

 

It may be well known but the committee didn't dock them like they did TCU and Baylor for having weak OOC schedules. I wonder if they know that their hypocrisy knows no bounds...

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I think the committee used the "B12 only plays 12 games and the other conferences play 13" argument. Baylor's OOC schedule has to improve and they should be playing a minimum of 1 other P5 school every year, 2 would be better. This past year, basically the system worked as it should. The conference winners from the 4 conferences that play a CCG were in...B12, no CCG, only 12 games, left out. What will be interesting is when say if we have a situation like a couple of years back when 7-5 Wisconsin beat 10-2 Nebraska something like 70-17, but assume it is tOSU at 12-0 that loses to say a 9-3 Wisconsin and the same year Alabama at 12-0 loses to Missouri at 8-4. Now the committee has problems...that's why I believe expanding to 8 games with all Conference winners and the committee can put 3 wild cards in, or realign the current P5 to a P4 and still only conference winners earn the right to make the playoffs, only 1 team per conference, and get rid of the selection committee altogether. I understand the money issues, but we've been wanting a real playoff system and that is how a real playoff should work...Conference winners regardless of record get in. Get rid of the selection committee and the subjectivity that surrounds it.

 

It's not uncommon for the media to hyper-focus on a particular conference. The Big XII used to get that sort of treatment. Does anyone remember when NU got to play for the NC when they didn't even play in the conference championship? Or when OU lost to KSU in the ccg and still got to play for the championship? The SEC West struggled in bowls this year, except in the Houston and Liberty bowl of course.

 

A CCG is not necessary, the Big XII came very close to putting two teams into the playoffs. I guarantee if Texas and OU had been in the place of Baylor or TCU, that playoff would have looked alot diffferent then it did.

The problem was presenting two trophy's and declaring Co-Champions, One True Champion and sticking too it would have worked last year, in my opinion.

 

Possibly, although anyone voting differently based on technicalities in the bylaws is a moron. There were plenty of valid reasons to vote for Ohio State, but basing votes on something that didn't change a single play on the field, only which label was attached to a team, was not one of them.

 

That was my thought as well. It drove me nuts when people would argue "well the committee docked them for not being a clear-cut champion." In fact I remember one argument being that the conference probably would have been much better off had the league arbitrarily named one of the teams a true champion. I don't know if that was just the commentators having no clue or respect for the committee's thought process, or if they got it right and the committee was really so out of it that they would have thought one of the teams was better by virtue of not finishing as co-champion.

 

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the committee members..."

I still do not like a committee making selections...too subjective and subject to manipulation.

 

I wished they had the old BCS system picking the top 4.

 

Don't let Finebaum see this article. He will dispatch the Tuscaloosa mafia to the author's home; probably with a nuclear option.

 

The other funny thing was that nobody gave a crap about the "co-champion" label until this past year. None of us considered ourselves to be South division champions the times OU & TX were in a two-way tie and OU had beaten us. In 2012 when OU and KSU both went 8-1 and K-State won head to head, even OU fans didn't consider themselves Big 12 champions. Now suddenly that it was an excuse to leave out a less prestigious program over a more prestigious one, everyone in the country went nuts over it.

 

^^^^^This.

 

SEC football coaches must get used to view of new landscape

The $7 million coach with waterfalls in his locker room is worried. The league with a smashing success of a television network and the best brand name in college football is sounding the alarm. The big, bad Southeastern Conference — which used to flaunt its seven consecutive national titles and dare the rest of the country to catch up — is suddenly on the run.

Go ahead and change the SEC's name to Conference LPF — as in Level Playing Field. Because after one day of the league's annual spring meetings, that now appears to be the mantra of a group of football coaches who simply do not understand the new normal of college athletics.

Just a year ago, it was the SEC leading the charge for the five power conferences to gain autonomy over certain NCAA rules, even floating the threat of a breakaway to form their own division. Now that world is here, and the unintended consequences have Alabama's Nick Saban and his brethren whining like multi-millionaires who expected their private plane to be stocked with Ace of Spades and instead only got a bottle of Dom Perignon.

"Let me say this in general about all rules, whether it's transfer rules or camp rules or any rules: We need to have the same rules in the big five in all the leagues," Saban said Tuesday. "If we're going to compete for the championship and everybody is going to play in the playoff system and everybody's going to compete for that, we need to get our rules in alignment so we're all on a level playing field.

"These things need to be global, otherwise we're going to become a farm system for all the other leagues."

If you need to read that last sentence again, go ahead because it is shocking in its disengagement from reality. And yet, it came directly out of the mouth of a coach who has won four national titles, reeled in five consecutive No. 1-ranked recruiting classes and works at a school that spends more on football than anyone in the country.

As the SEC holds its meetings this week, a few issues are simmering in college sports that showcase why autonomy was not going to be the be-all, end-all solution for school in the cash-rich Power Five. While characterizing autonomy as a way to solve the divide between haves and have-nots made for good media fodder, the much bigger issue was always going to be the philosophical divide between the haves and have-mores.

***

Still, the SEC should be above whining and complaining about level playing fields. This is the conference with the most passionate fans, the best facilities, the top recruits, the highest coaching salaries and now the best media platform with its 1-year old television network.

If Saban can't make that work, he might as well petition the NCAA to put USC and UCLA in a biosphere. Wouldn't want those sunny, 70-degree days to sway recruits, now would we?

[Full USA TODAY article here]

 

The SEC whining that they don't rule all of the roost. Screw them!

 

When talking with irrational SEC fans (most, but not all), simply reply with "The SEC is so good, they win 62.5% of their in-conference games."

It will buy you a few minutes of silence while they Google it or text a friend.

 

A bit of a self-aggrandizing article, but interesting...

SEC Bias: The Case Against ESPN
June 4, 2015

The 2014 college football season was abound with accusations of heavy pro-SEC bias on behalf of the self-proclaimed worldwide sports entertainment leader, ESPN. While our site was one of the first to point out this dastardly conflict of sports media interest... Rolling Stone Magazine got on board last season and joined us in our quest to spread the truth [Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...spn-and-the-college-football-playoff-20141028]. Despite all the corruption that we believe still exists within the tyrannical ESPN Empire, our quest to expose the truth has clearly rattled some nerves in their upper brass and major changes are being made in what could be an attempt to improve their public perception at the college football coverage level.

Much of this change may have had its primary trigger last October when ESPN’s top College Gameday broadcaster, Chris Fowler, went on a madman’s rant defending ESPN coverage of the SEC and downplaying any SEC bias, calling non-SEC fans “stupid and uninformed” for their opinion. [Source: http://bloguin.com/thestudentsectio...ant-says-about-espn-and-college-football.html] It is clear that his rant was inspired by the growing public and social media unrest in non-SEC football fans... However, Fowler’s rant had the opposite of its intended effect. What Fowler may not have realized is that despite the ardent social media protests of so much of the non-SEC fan base, it was still a small percentage of college football followers who acknowledged or much less understood the SEC bias that was happening on a daily basis on that network. By angrily denying the presence of bias, Fowler inadvertently confirmed it. For the first time ever, many viewers outside of the deep South were starting to look differently at the constant praise of a vastly overrated conference and questioning ESPN’s motives. Despite weeks of damage control following Fowler’s rant, the damage had been done. And for the first time ever, our message was being validated.

It was clear that ESPN executives had seen enough. In February of this year, ESPN announced Chris Fowler would no longer be heading up College Gameday, as they were replacing him with Rece Davis. Of course while this abrupt move (made while Fowler was on vacation and not even immediately available for comment or so much as allowed to be the first to announce his official “goodbye”) was being portrayed as the plan all along by both ESPN brass and ultimately also by Fowler, those of us following the drama this past season knew better. It was one of many recent moves by ESPN to attain damage control. But it leads to the question… was Fowler vehemently defending the SEC all season by order of his superiors who were trying to protect their heavy financial investment in the SEC, or was he really all along doing this of his own accord in a personal state of paranoia and bipolar mania?

ESPN hasn’t stopped at Chris Fowler in their moves to fix public perception disarray. Former Notre Dame coach and evolved SEC chanter Lou Holtz departed ESPN by a “mutual agreement.”, and just this past week Mark May was demoted from ESPN’s College Football Final show and replaced with two analysts who probably are the least likely to ever become SEC shills: Joey Galloway (Ohio State grad) and Danny Kanell (Florida State grad). [Source: http://www.elevenwarriors.com/colle...lace-mark-may-on-espns-college-football-final] [T]his may have been the most substantial move ever made by the pro-SEC network to bring in more impartial analysts for their college football broadcasts, which in recent years have been dominated by endlessly SEC hyping drones.

We suspect these recent moves on College Gameday and the College Football Final show are merely ESPN brass’ way of making things APPEAR more fair. It will likely make the televised analyses more bearable, this much we hope. It might be nice to see Ohio State win big games without being proclaimed as “SEC-like” in their speed; or to see Arizona shut down opponents without being lauded as a team with an “SEC-like” defense; or to see a few less pandering morons argue which 3 or 4 SEC teams should go into the final four team national championship playoff every week; or to get through an episode of College Gameday without analysts making 20 minute long prosecutorial arguments and cover-up conspiracies on behalf of unsubstantiated rape accusations in a desperate attempt to make the nation hate a team that keeps out-recruiting the SEC (Florida State).

There is no way ESPN will allow the SEC slide into mediocrity to continue without a fight, not when they have billions of dollars invested in that conference’s success and all the podium power to continue shaping public perception. This is especially clear when considering how much money that ESPN may already be LOSING (and will continue to lose if the SEC cannot get their top teams back to the pinnacle of college football) in the past year since their SEC investment, as reported here by the NY Times last month: “Rising costs at ESPN reduced operating income at Disney’s cable networks division by 9 percent in the company’s second quarter. Higher programming and production costs were connected to college football, including the introduction of the SEC Network … “ [Source: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/1...rom-espns-upfront-presentation.html?referrer=]

Continued below.

 

Continued from above.

We suspect ESPN will continue their pro-SEC campaigning. But by somewhat watering down the broadcast bias, they are likely hoping to silence the critics and win back some viewers. What they won’t stop doing, like sending their private “investigators” city by city trying to dig up criminal dirt on every rising non-SEC power (while continuing to fail to report the handfuls of crimes and arrests of SEC players occurring literally every month), might be a little less transparent to the everyday college football fan. Folks at Notre Dame are well aware of what we are referring to here…

Earlier this year ESPN sued Notre Dame for preventing their “investigators” from digging through University police records looking for dirt on Irish football players. ESPN has been carrying on that practice for quite some time apparently, but not surprisingly they have only been doing it at top programs who threatened SEC dominance, like FSU. They had not run into any opposition until they arrived at the doorstep of Notre Dame, a team that of late has resumed once again to playing among the big dogs and more recently is fresh off a bowl win over SEC West darling LSU. When Notre Dame refused ESPN access to their police records to try to dig for dirt on Irish players, ESPN sued. Fortunately in this case the judge ruled in favor of Notre Dame, stating that ESPN does NOT have such a right and that these police records are “private.” [Source: http://www.splc.org/article/2015/04...cords-are-private-judge-rules-in-espn-lawsuit] While this story did gain some national sports media attention (except of course by ESPN itself), what most folks don’t realize is that these investigators are trolling nearly every non-SEC powerhouse program desperately trying to find bad press. Not ironically, reports come out nearly every week of SEC player arrests with nary a peep from ESPN. And as has been pointed out previously on our site, part of ESPN’s contract with the SEC Network calls for limited coverage of negative SEC exposure, which explains exactly why ESPN will not “dig” for SEC player dirt and simply won’t report their major off the field league problems EVER. [Source: http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-fo...-bias-ownership-derrick-thomas-manziel-stoops]

ESPN’s position has had numerous college football programs outside of the SEC deeply concerned, but only in recent years have their coaches finally chosen to speak up. When Bob Stoops called out the overrated SEC several years ago, the gasps could be heard from coast to coast. Nebraska Head Coach Bo Pellini last season remarked on ESPN’s ownership of the SEC Network and their heavy investment in the success of the SEC: “I don’t think that kind of relationship is good for college football. That’s just my opinion. Anytime you have a relationship with somebody, you have a partnership, you are supposed to be neutral. It’s pretty hard to stay neutral in that situation.” [Source: http://regressing.deadspin.com/the-sec-really-does-benefit-from-media-bias-in-polls-1652415873]

To put those sentiments into a non-sports perspective, let’s take a look at news broadcasting. News agencies are constantly selective as to what they want to report and how much of it in order to push their own internal political agendas. However, there is one fact that makes the ESPN situation far more egregious than the political bias seen between news agencies… ESPN has a practical monopoly over the sports entertainment world! Their affiliation with ABC and their ownership by the mega-billion dollar corporation Disney only adds to the imperialistic potential as a company with too much control over not only the sports entertainment business, but now even over the sports outcomes themselves! Coupling this with their tight affiliation with the newly formed “College Football Playoff Committee,” a committee who tried desperately until the last poll of the season to put 2-3 SEC teams in the 4 team playoff (and would’ve succeeded were it not for the ACC’s elbow-drop on the SEC East in the final week and the Mississippi frauds stumbling over each other), it becomes clear that ESPN could arguably be the most dangerous and disruptive entity in all of college sports… even more dangerous than the infamous SEC “Bagman”!

 

Bias? What bias?

 

Hahahahaha wow.

 

Wow! That's insane! Especially aggy at #8. Hell, a blind chimp with a concussion could've done a better job than that.

 

They may have #1 right, but the remainder is a joke that progressively gets worse. Ole Miss, aggy and the pig people might win 18 games in total.

 

Good article today at Fox Sports entitled, The SEC has now become a league of ridiculous excuses. I don't feel like editing it, but here's the beginning:

For seven years, as the SEC lorded its string of BCS championship trophies over the rest of college football, its coaches reminded us at every turn just how much tougher, stronger and faster their conference was than everyone else's. As insufferable as it may have seemed at times, it was hard to argue otherwise.

Now, after consecutive disappointing postseasons, we're hearing a slew of excuses from SEC coaches why they're no longer dominating the rest of the country. Which is not only insufferable, but patently absurd.
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And here's the end:

So you'll have to forgive us if we're not exactly spilling tears over all the apparent slights that are keeping down the S-E-C, where the "E" apparently now stands for "Excuses."​

 

Word is getting out.

 

They'll win at least ten out of their non-conference schedule. Arkansas should be pretty damn strong this year. The other two remain to be seen.

 

I think last year was a lesson learned for the Big 12. They have to find a way to find one true champion and they have to schedule well if they are not UT or OU (though UT does okay in that regard, usually) and have to play at least one quality opponent in their out of conference schedule.

 

The SEC is very good at the top, but they are top heavy. The teams in the middle and to the bottom of the totem pole are bad. The Big XII doesn't get as much respect but we have the tendency to send most of our teams to bowls, in fact the first year they only had 10 teams we had 9 in bowl games. I don't think though that you are going to get perceptions to change as long as ESPN keeps being a house organ for the SEC.

 

"The so-highly regarded SEC West was 2-5 in bowls this season…"

This thread would be less of a bad joke if one of those 2 wins wasn't against Texas, by Arkansas.

And not by one of their higher ranked teams, but a team that finished the year 6-6, 2-6 in conference, and dead last in the SEC West.

That then beat Texas 31-7, and held Texas to 59 total yard.

59 yards. So less than 1 yard per minute played. The entire game was one big embarrassment to anyone who went as a Texas fan, or even tried watching it at a sports bar.

Look, the SEC won 7 straight national championships, and played for one more till the final drive of that game (FSU/AU).

In comparison, the B12(10) last had a team in the title game in the 2009 season, and hasn't won it since 2005. The conference is so lowly regarded, and has such foolish policies ("One true champion", the B12 ad claimed - ok who's the B12 Champion? - "Two teams, yahh! Orange slices and Chuck-E-Cheese pizza for everyone!") that the co/half/sort of champion TCU (though Baylor beat them on the field) couldn't get the time of day for the 4th slot, correctly, as it went to OSU who proceeded to whip up on both Bama and Oregon.

When Texas starts being in the hunt for titles, even conference ones, and this league is more than an afterthought, threads like this might be OK. As of now, it's just sad.

 

Ok fellas, I see posts daily and weekly about how over hyped the SEC has been and because the top teams didn't play well it was proof of that over hyping. Some of you like stats so here we go.

All time bowl records ranked by win%:

Conference Seasons Bowls Record Win%
SEC 83 406 227-170-9 .570
Pac 10/12 100 249 131-113-5 .536
Big XII 20 138 67-71-0 .486
ACC 63 218 103-113-2 .477
B1G 120 257 116-140-1 .453
WAC 51 114 48-65-1 .425

The number of bowl games compared to other conferences is astonishing to me. I ranked by win % because the number of bowls are not very equally measureable, however regardless of years and number of participants the win percentage is really all that matters assuming the teams are paired up equally.

Say what you want about over hype, but in the history of college football the SEC has almost as many bowl victories as most conferences have total bowl games played. I stopped with the WAC because no one else has much to show.

Another interesting stat is that they have had 270 teams ranked in the preseason (yes many of those before the so called SEC glorification by ESPN) yet have ended with 311 ranked teams meaning regardless of your preconceived notions of preseason over hyping, they have historically finished stronger than they were originally thought to be.

 

Baylor.