Looking at the schedules of all these top SEC teams is an absolute joke. If not for pre-season rankings, things would be much different. Consider: #1 Miss State: They started the year unranked and the the only team that they have beaten that is ranked, well until somehow LSU was given some votes today, was Auburn at #2. Their schedule up to that point consisted of: Southern Miss, UAB, South Alabama and then #8 LSU and then #6 A&M. However, we now know that both LSU and A&M are complete jokes, yet by beating two supposed Top 10 teams, Miss State vaulted into the top 5. Essentially, they have only one quality win, against Auburn. While impressive to beat Auburn, Kansas State nearly accomplished the same feat, but no one at the time was clamoring for KSU to be considered a top team. In short, Miss State has played a pretty mediocre schedule, and has benefited mightily by beating extremely overrated SEC teams. # 3 Ole Miss: I give Ole Miss a little more credence because they did beat Alabama, but then again, look at their underwhelming schedule: Boise State, Vanderbilt, La-Lafayette, Memphis, Alabama and then A&M. Ole Miss was not very highly ranked to start the year, but even after beating a mediocre Tennessee team, the only ranked team currently that they have played is Alabama. Everyone else is not ranked. #4 Alabama: The great Crimson Tide began the season by struggling to get by unranked WVU, and then proceeded to play a largely mediocre schedule consisting of: Florida Atlantic, Southern Miss, Florida, #11 Ole Miss, Arkansas and #21 A&M. As we sit today, the only currently ranked team that Bama has played is current #3 Ole Miss, who we earlier saw has only played one currently ranked team, Alabama. Yet Bama is still ranked in the top 5. #5 Auburn: Auburn has played a decent schedule, but nothing to strike fear in hearts of men: Arkansas, San Jose State, Kansas State, Louisana Tech, LSU and then Miss State. We know that Kansas State is actually pretty good, but again, they have benefited from starting the year ranked highly and then taking advantage of beating some bad teams, including LSU, who was unranked as of this last week. Their toughest game appears to be Miss State and then KSU. Now, we must mention South Carolina and A&M for contributing to the problem. SC started out the year ranked in the Top 10 as we all know, and then A&M, who started out #19, summarily devasted them on their home field. Of course, every voter pissed their pants and rewarded A&M with a top 10 ranking. A&M then followed their destruction of the mighty top 10 SEC foe with victories over: Lamar, Rice, SMU and Arkansas This meat grinder of a schedule resulted in the aggies rising to the lofty height of #6 in all the land, at which point then #12 Miss State (who had previously triumphed over then #8 LSU) beat the mighty ags (who summarily got their asses handed to them by Alabama). The back to back victories over two Top 8 SEC SEC SEC teams caused voters to go into seizures and catapult MSU from obscurity into the Top 3. Again, granted, MSU did defeat the team that barely got out of Manhattan alive, but the point remains the same: When you have a bunch of SEC teams start the year all in the Top 10, and the majority of their non conference schedules include games against the little sisters of the poor, what you end up with is 4 out of 5 teams in the Top 5 halfway through the season, and nothing but in conference games the rest of the way. Be prepared for at least 2 SEC teams in the playoffs because voters are idiots. I am surprised that WVU isnt at least in the Top 15 for no other reason than they just took down the #4 team in the land. You can bet that if Baylor was in the SEC, and so was WVU, that they would be.
Who would you put above these teams? Ole Miss and MissSt are 2 of 3 undefeated teams. Alabama, Auburn, and ND are the only 1-loss teams in the country with their only loss to an undefeated team.
If only Kansas State had a kicker...and OSU had not dropped so many wide open passes against FSU. I'm afraid we're going to see three SEC teams and FSU in the final four. With those odds, it's a near lock that the SEC wins the title again.
The computer Sagarin ratings, which couldn't care less about conference affiliation or SEC-homerism, currently puts SEC teams in all 5 of the top spots: The Link (Interestingly, the Big12 has #6, 7, and 8).
The SEC is so dominant, they win 62% of their in-confernce games. Tell that to ags / SEC folks and it will buy you 4 or 5 minutes of silence as they text their friends and Google that. And did the Bama fans chant "SEC! SEC! SEC!" yesterday afternoon? They should have.
Excellent post. And the beauty of the SEC polemic is that they've insulated themselves.. If the SEC west winner is a 2 loss team... its because they just cannibalized. If its an unbeaten or 1 loss team...They are just THAT good. Either way, they win because of the messed up voting parameters. If only WVU or KState would've pulled one out.
They should just create an AP (SEC) and the rest, because that's all the writers are voting for. Makes it hard to root against Winston, Winston vs SEC.
Seems to me the greater illusion is rankings and the idea of a championship in the first place. Ever since the day the media found they could make a buck off the water-cooler-chest thumper-my-team-could-beat-your-team-and-is-the-best-in-the-nation crowd and their need for some system that could determine a true national champion, all that's happened is that experience shows that at least in football there is no way to determine a true national champion. The selection process is so subjective, and it tries to pit hamburgers against eggs benedict against baklava to say which is the best of all. It doesn't work; it won't work; and they need to dump it all and go back to bowl games with bowl committees picking good teams that would make good games in fun locations where making the trip to a bowl game with friends was a great pasttime. Oh, well.
Do you believe that Miss State, having played essentially only one quality team all year, is the number one team in the nation? And if so, why? The strength of beating one quality opponent is good enough? Yes, LSU was 8 and yes A&M was 6, but what is Sagarin seeing that gives them that kind of bump? LSU and A&M as we have discovered just not very good at the end of the day. What would Sagarin have ranked Miss State if LSU and A&M were unranked when they beat them? I can promise that Miss State would probably be Top 15 at best in the human polls because they would only have one win against a quality team.
The poll has bad info. ND was in the Top 10 when FSU beat them. That omission negatively impacts FSU rating. Say what you want but nobody thought they would win the NC last year and they did.
What is Sagarin's basis for rankings? Simply W-L record? Yards per game? If Sagarin is the gold standard, then why the hell do we even bother with any polls?
and just because you win the SEC should not mean you are automatically in the NC game, especially when you lose a conference game at home to an unranked team (Gators, 2008)...
None this would even be an issue if they didn't have to "VOTE" for rankings. I am convinced voting promotes favoritism and corruption which is why the SEC is placed so hi in the rankings. If the payoffs were not centered around the Good Ol Boys making their money and they did it the right way by letting each conference send their best team and let them fight it out it would be a much better system.
The only win by an SEC West team over an out of conference ranked team was Auburn over K-St. The rest is, shal we say, incest. Hook'em!!!
On the question being asked by 2005joe, how about Oregon. The final four committee is supposed to take in consideration injuries at the time of a loss. Oregon was temporally missing 4 of the five OL for that game. Since then, they have 4 back and are expected to get all five back, I believe. Oregon beat a then top 10 team, Mich. State. They have the best QB in college football.
the illusion of the SEC is nothing new and is not wished away by this week's sagarin rankings, there are other computer ratings that disagree with sagarin so why just spout off about sagarin...
"who do you think should be ahead of the 4 SEC teams and why?" ok, how about Oregon, ND and FSU, and you ask why, and i say why not? are you trying to tell us that the top 4 SEC teams would sweep matchups with top teams from across the country? several computer polls have other teams ahead of some of the top 4 SEC teams... this is the other problem with the sec illusion is the arrogance and irrational exuberance it is presented with... this is exactly what led brown tootsie pop head finebaum to tell us that the third place big 12 team had no chance of beating bama last year in a BCS bowl
The whole problem with the system was just summed up when you said "who do you think". that is the real issue with voting, poles, computers whatever the tool used to guess at who should be number one. Number one doesn't even mean anything until the last game is played. Each conference send your best team and fight it out. We don't need to see two teams from the same conference play twice maybe three time in one year, what is the point in that.
