We got more than a few college football crumbs recently when the SEC's media days came to town. The four-day affair the SEC throws each year in various cities this year took place this year at the Omni Hotel in Downtown Dallas, as the most powerful conference in the country welcomed the University of Texas Longhorns and the University of Oklahoma Sooners to its ranks.
If you listen to my radio show, The Invasion, on Sports Radio 96.7 FM and 1310 AM The Ticket, we broadcast live from for all four days. It was quite the environment, with 44 radio stations from across the footprint of the new look SEC. I am a massive college football fan and lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where I worked at a sports talk station in the heart of the SEC in two separate stints for more than five years. I can tell you; it really does just mean more in the SEC.
Simply put: the SEC has dominated college football for the last couple of decades. For proof, just look at the constantly flowing pipeline of SEC talent into the NFL. The SEC has led all conferences in draft picks each of the last 18 consecutive seasons and have had 58 Top 10 picks since 2009. No other conference has had more than 27. Oh, let's not forget that an SEC team has won 13 of the last 20 national titles.
Part 2 of the "New-look SEC" Roundtable https://t.co/K6qZVapNBd
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Before you think, “well, that’s because they have Alabama”, keep in mind that five different schools have combined for those 13 titles: Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Auburn and Florida. Such has been the dominance of the SEC. Combine that with the chance to generate even more revenue, and a major change, beyond teams merely jumping from one conference to another, is set to take place this season.
College football is moving to a 12-team playoff for the first time ever. The idea is that this will provide more schools the opportunity to win national titles while also creating more games of real meaning for casual fans. Not to mention the bonus of printing more cash, of course. All four power conferences (SEC, Big 12, Big 10, ACC) are guaranteed to have at least one school in the playoff. The so-called "Group of Five Conferences" (Sun Belt, Mountain West, American Athletic, Conference USA and Mid-American) will have at least one team from that alliance taking a shot against the big boys.
It’s a drastic change from anything we’ve ever seen and will lead to more games, meaning the season will stretch later in the year.
No longer will a second loss feel as though a team has no hope. Even teams with three losses and, in some cases in the SEC and Big 10, four might still be in the playoff picture. But will the expansion of the playoffs actually allow for new teams to win championships?
The reality is we haven’t seen a “new” or non-traditional champion since 1996. That was the last time a school won its first-ever national title, and that just so happened to be the Florida Gators of the SEC. Regardless of the era, college football has always been dominated by the same collection of schools. In the last 50 seasons of college football, just 22 programs have won national titles.
The reality is, it’s becoming harder for teams from the Big 12 and the ACC to compete on the level of what it takes to win a national championship. Local Big 12 member TCU is a great example of this. Just two years ago, Horned Frogs shocked a lot of people by beating Michigan in the national semifinals, but they fell back to earth after getting obliterated by Georgia in the national title game.
I think the expansion of the playoffs will yield much of what we have seen in recent years. The SEC will continue to dominate, the Big 10 might actually start winning more titles and it will become increasingly difficult for the ACC and the Big 12 to win.
The SEC and the Big 10 are likely to combine for 7 or 8 of the 12 playoff teams every single year. Since the origin of the four-team playoff in 2014, the SEC and Big 10 have combined to average 7.5 of the top 11 teams per season in the playoff, if you factor in the conferences those schools are in now. Worse yet, current Big 10 and SEC teams combined for 12 of the Top 13 teams in the final College Football Playoff ranking last season.
The only team from the Big 12 or ACC team in the Top 13 was Florida State. Now, obviously you can’t have 10 teams from two conferences in the new 12-team playoff, but you get the idea. It is very likely that the SEC will have 3 or 4 teams each year and the Big 10 will have 3 or 4 teams each year. The Group of Five will have one and that will leave 3 or 4 other spots for the ACC and Big 12 to share.
The ACC has Clemson and Florida State, both of which have won titles in recent memory. The Big 12 has…Colorado? BYU? You can laugh, but those are the only two schools in the current Big 12 that have won a national title in the last half-century. Throw in TCU from 1935 and 1938 and Oklahoma State from 1945 and you have every national title ever won by current Big 12 schools. Will Utah or Kansas State be a school that punches through to sit at the champions' table the way Florida did back in 1996? It’s possible but implausible.
There will be a Big 12 team, maybe two, in the playoff each year and, yes, one of those teams will undoubtedly upset a favorite from time to time. Perhaps it will be North Carolina or Louisville from the ACC. But there’s a reason the story of David had him slaying only one Goliath. Taking down three of them in a row isn’t something we are likely to see.
So, enjoy the expansion of the playoff! It will expand hope for some, but until we see a program break through and become a new national champion, don’t plan on playoff expansion changing much of anything when the time comes to hoist that national title trophy on January 20, 2025.
