The SEC seems to be in fine shape. (Photo-Touchdown Alabama Magazine)

The Non Politically Correct State of the SEC Union

By: Larry Burton

Last year the SEC was clearly not the best conference in football top to bottom and they while they may not be this year, they can at least make a logical argument for it this season. Let’s make that argument.

The ACC clearly isn’t the best this season as it may have been last year. Tennessee may be the worst team in the SEC this season and the only win they have except for three cupcake wins against second tier programs was against Ga. Tech who has beaten three fellow ACC members and only lost to undefeated Miami by only one point. Florida State was supposed to be the standard bearer this season for the ACC and Alabama not only killed them, but also took their whole season down by taking out their most valuable player, their quarterback, from the whole season. They’ll end up not making a bowl game. Their second best team, now their top team barely beat a two loss Auburn team and their signature loss was to Syracuse, a four loss team. That’s really all that needs to be said about the SEC over the ACC.

With the further demise of Ohio State, who had two awful and embarrassing beatdowns and Penn State, who was beaten by the afore mentioned pretender, who is actually good in the Big 10? Yes Wisconsin is still undefeated, but how many teams have they beaten with a winning record? Try none. Every one else that’s supposed to be good has two losses and it may be possible that no Big 10 team makes the playoffs, so lets excuse them from the debate also.

The PAC 10? Yes they’re all sort of equal, equally mediocre. This was supposed to be the year of USC, but they have two losses and barely beat an awful Texas team by three points and a 5-4 Utah team by one, so please. Their standard bearer now is Washington and they look primed to be at least a two loss team themselves. So it’s easy to excuse them from the debate of who’s best and perhaps from the playoffs as well.

Now, who does that leave of the big boys? The Big 12? And by the way, why do they still call themselves that with only 10 members? I guess it says a lot about their education prowess there. As for football, They have two one loss teams right now leading the pack Oklahoma and TCU and since they play each other, the best team they can point to for the playoffs will have at least one loss and the other will have at least two. Oklahoma’s signature win? Beating a two loss Ohio State. TCU’s best win? They beat a two loss Oklahoma State team. Their and Oklahoma’s signature loss so far? Both lost to Iowa State, loser of three games so far. In other words, none of their leading teams will have a better resume to make the playoffs than the SEC Championship runner up. That’s not opinion, that’s fact. So let’s mark them off the list of who’s the best conference too.

That leaves the SEC. It used to be said that there was only Alabama and the 11 dwarves in the SEC and that only the top was good. This year the worst team in the SEC East are Florida, Missouri, Vanderbilt and Tennessee and together they have only two out of conference losses in total. The rest of the SEC East has none. And that is said to be the weak division. Meanwhile the SEC West has Arkansas and Ole Miss at the bottom with 4-5 records and between them, there is just two out of conference losses. The entire rest of the division just has three between the other five teams.

In the college football playoff poll, only one conference has two teams in the top 4 playoff spots and that is the SEC.  In the first College Football Playoff poll, the SEC had five teams in the top 20. That’s one forth of the entire poll. The ACC had four, the Big 12 had four, the Big 10 had three, the PAC 10 had two and none in the top 10 and there was one independant, Notre Dame. This just sort of proves another “Who’s your daddy” kind of point doesn’t it?

So while the SEC isn’t always the top dog, as verified by last season’s tally, they are on top of the mountain most of the time, including this season. Therefore, that makes the SEC’s state of the union just fine. To make things better, the teams with disappointing seasons this year are shedding their dead wood coaches and moving on to hopefully more productive head men, so even the future looks bright.