The SEC is the Best Conference in College Football

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is, and has been, the best conference in college football.

Let’s take a step back in history. The beginning of the most recent era in SEC domination started in 2006. This era has not yet met its end. The 2005 title game — in which Texas defeated USC on the heels of Vince Young’s touchdown scramble as the final seconds drained from the clock — was the first national title game I, personally, can remember. Conveniently, it was the last title game for the next seven seasons that saw a non-SEC team hoist the crystal ball in January.

In NCAA Division-I college football, there is a group of conferences known as the “Power Five.” This is not an NCAA-recognized coalition, rather a group of conferences in which ESPN has invested in significantly and thus has an incentive to funnel into major bowl games.

The title is mostly important because these conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference (B1G), Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and the SEC — are colloquially known as the toughest to compete in. In the most recent AP Poll, the University of Central Florida and Notre Dame were the only top-25 squads not included in the Power Five, so the reputation is justified.

This means that beginning in the 2006 season all the way through the 2012 campaign, the four other Power Five conferences did not field a single national championship team. The SEC earned seven straight Division-I trophies. It was typically the case that the SEC representative in the title game would face a member another Power Five conference — a rare chance to see the best from two conferences clash. Only once did the SEC compete against itself in the title game. In the SEC versus non-SEC matchups over this period of seven years, the SEC team won by an average of 16.3 points.

That streak of conference dominance was disrupted in 2013 when the ACC’s Florida State downed the SEC’s Auburn Tigers. The margin of victory? Three points. Even then, Auburn was the weakest team the conference had put on the title stage since the streak of dominance began.

With two weeks left in the 2013 regular season, Auburn had one loss (to LSU) and was ranked No. 7 in the nation. The team was playing against No. 25 Georgia, down one point, lined up at fourth and 18 with 36 seconds remaining. The Tigers’ quarterback, Nick Marshall, dropped back and tossed a miracle into the hands of the defense. It bounced straight into a receiver’s hands, and the lucky wide out virtually walked into the end zone. The announcers called it the “play of the year.” And it would have been if the team didn’t play Alabama next.

Alabama was undefeated, ranked No. 1, and all but crowned national champion by the time the annual Iron Bowl rolled around. The game was tied and the Crimson Tide had the ball. Instead of trying to waste away the clock and send the game to overtime, Alabama pushed for a field goal.

Then, in a play infamously dubbed the “kick-six,” an Auburn player fielded the short kick attempt in the endzone, and ran it all the way back for a touchdown, winning the game and sending Auburn to the Rose Bowl to lose the first title game for the SEC in eight years. But I digress.

Since 2013, the NCAA has moved to a playoff system to determine the national champion. Four teams make the playoffs and the winners of each semi-final match face off in the national title game. In this new method of crowning a champion, the SEC has four playoff appearances and two national titles. The next closest conference is the ACC with two apparences and one title. The Big Ten and Pac-12 both have one appearance but the former left with the championship trophy while the representative from the Pac-12 did not. Evaluating the last 12 seasons, the SEC’s nine conference titles dwarf the rest of the nation’s combined three.

It’s not just title games that matter. The SEC has more alumni playing at the professional level than any other conference. As of September 2017, the conference had claimed 358 National Football League roster spots. The next closest conference was the ACC and Big Ten which tied at 267.

However, the conferences have different amounts of teams. Still, when you account for the number of teams in the conference, the SEC still leads the pack with an average of 25 players in the NFL per team. The next closest conference, the Pac-12, averages 20.8 players per team while the third- and fourth- ranked conferences — the ACC and Big Ten — average 19.1. The SEC is the clear outlier here.

Aside from historical data and alumni in the pros, even the most recent AP Poll supports this claim. Within the top-10 teams, four — No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Georgia, No. 5 LSU and No. 8 Auburn — compete in the SEC. The next-best conference is the Big 12, with No. 7 Oklahoma and No. 9 West Virginia cracking the top 10.

There is even an argument to be made that SEC teams — as we progress into the season — will be underrated because of their strength of schedule. Obviously, if you continuously play teams from the toughest conference, it’s going to be harder to win more games than someone in a cupcake conference.

Every year the preseason comes around and journalists start to feel antsy, wondering if the SEC is really as good as it’s made out to be. My favorite is one from USA Today: “So why did LSU make the [the Coaches Poll Top 25]? Helmets. Jerseys. Reputation, both of the program itself and, more importantly, its conference. LSU is here because of the benefit of the doubt extended to the SEC, which goes something like this: The fifth-best team in this conference must be one of the 25 best teams in all of college football. Which is ridiculous.” LSU was ranked No. 24 at the time. The program is now 5-0 and ranked fifth in the nation.

I reiterate: the SEC is, and has been, the best conference in college football.

Am I biased? Probably. Am I wrong? Aboslutely not.

—Staff writer Cade Palmer can be reached at cade.palmer@thecrimson.com.