November 23, 2024 is a day that will go down in infamy in college football. After a slew of shocking upsets we didn’t see coming, I was thrilled to finally see some people arrive at the same conclusion I’ve had since September. The SEC isn’t that good. At least not in 2024.
And so I conclude definitively that, as of November 23, the 2024 SEC is officially overrated.
Heading into Thanksgiving, only Texas has fewer than two losses, and the Longhorns’ resume isn’t exactly the sturdiest anyway. Seven SEC teams have two or three losses, and yet, all of them believe they still belong in the College Football Playoff for some reason. Very few of them actually do.
For weeks, we’ve done all sorts of gymnastics to collectively lift up every team in the conference while hypocritically bashing others.
Texas A&M gets a break for losing to Auburn on the road because it’s an SEC road game. At the same time, Texas seems to be getting little to no credit for going on the road to Michigan and dominating the Wolverines.
Why? Auburn has that precious SEC crest on its jerseys.
There’s this little nugget about Indiana and Alabama as well… I know Kanell is more or less tweeting with tongue in cheek, but it’s a valid point:
Here’s a third case: Previously undefeated BYU lost a close game at home to Kansas, and we couldn’t get the Cougars out of the top 10 fast enough. However, Ole Miss has a similarly bad home loss to Kentucky, and it isn’t at all exclusionary to the Rebels’ at-large case for the playoff. Kansas is a better team than Kentucky in every major metric or rating, and the Jayhawks would beat the Wildcats in 77% of games on a neutral field.
Ncaagamesim.com is a really cool site, by the way.
I can go on and on with examples, but you get the point. The SEC only gets credit because, well, it’s the SEC. Anytime that notion is questioned, the questioner gets attacked and ostracized.
I’d love to have enough viewers on this to get attacked and ostracized myself!
College Football Math
We all hate it, but you know we all do it! The transitive property gets used and abused in college football, and it serves as a direct method to compare resumes.
The college football math starts to not look very good for the SEC playoff hopefuls particularly, so let’s take a look.
Texas
Its one loss to Georgia doesn’t look too bad, except it was at home by two scores. Georgia’s math isn’t great (we’ll get into that), but at face value, not a bad loss.
The Longhorns went to the wire against Vanderbilt, who lost to Georgia State and barely beat Ball State. And that’s considered one of Texas’ marquee wins. Michigan has also reemerged as a solid win for the Horns now that the Wolverines are bowl eligible. Again, I’m not sure why Texas doesn’t get more credit for going to the Big House and dominating the way it did. I have a guess, though – Michigan isn’t in the SEC.
Georgia
The Bulldogs lost to Alabama and Ole Miss, which have cumulatively suffered defeats to 4-7 Kentucky, 6-5 Vanderbilt, 6-5 Oklahoma, 6-5 Florida, 7-4 LSU, and 9-2 Tennessee. 5/6 of those losses are objectively bad.
Georgia should get way more flak for losing the games it did, because the teams it lost to have proven to not to exactly be world beaters.
Tennessee
The Vols got dominated by Georgia and also lost to 6-5 Arkansas. The Razorbacks lost to Oklahoma State, which might be the worst P4 team in America, as well as a bad LSU team. It also got boat-raced by Ole Miss at home.
The web for Tennessee starts to look even worse when you evaluate Oklahoma State and LSU. The Pokes are 0-8 (!) in the Big 12, and we know now that LSU isn’t a good team either after jarring losses to Alabama and Florida. Tennessee lost to a team that got dominated by those two programs. Enough said there.
Texas A&M
The math for the Aggies takes a dark turn pretty quickly. Notre Dame followed up its win at Kyle Field with a home loss to Northern Illinois, a middle-of-the-road MAC team.
A&M later got shellacked by South Carolina, which in fairness might have the best-looking math of any team on this list. The Auburn loss, however, is inexcusable. The Tigers were 4-6 going into that upset, with defeats against mid-to-bad teams like Cal, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt.
South Carolina
Speaking of the Gamecocks, I actually don’t think their case is that bad overall. The LSU loss came about due to a mix of a QB injury and untimely officiating decisions toward the end. Additionally, South Carolina was in control against Alabama for long stretches.
Things start to go south when you consider that blowout loss to Ole Miss at home. Ole Miss, as we’ll get into, maths out pretty poorly when you consider its losses to Kentucky, Florida, and LSU, all of which are unranked.
Alabama
Unlike South Carolina, the Tide’s math equation looks pretty poor when you start to look at it. Alabama lost to 6-5 Vanderbilt, 6-5 Oklahoma, and Tennessee, which I already evaluated. According to these results, Alabama is inconsistent at best, and any results against it don’t hold the argumentative water they usually do.
Ole Miss
Arguably the worst math on this entire list. Kentucky is a downright awful team at 4-7, and the Rebels lost to that mess at home. Ole Miss also lost to LSU and Florida, two teams who are lucky to be bowl eligible.
The fact of the matter is that Ole Miss has three losses to unranked teams. LSU stayed ranked for forever just to give credence to other SEC resumes, but it’s clear the Tigers aren’t one of the 25 best teams in the country. Florida, despite the recent momentum, is still the same team that has struggled most of the year. Kentucky is 4-7. Ole Miss lost to all of them. Not good.
Missouri
It’s a long shot, I know, but Mizzou still has a chance to get to the playoff. The Tigers’ math, however, doesn’t do them any favors. They got smoked by Texas A&M and Alabama and lost close to South Carolina. Collectively, those three were defeated by Auburn, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, LSU, and others.
This tells me a couple things about the SEC.
First, there is true parody in the SEC. The worst teams are not that much worse than the best teams. Georgia was in a dogfight with Kentucky. Auburn beat Texas A&M. Oklahoma beat Alabama. Mississippi State is pretty much the only non-competitive team in the conference.
This is just as much a product of the best teams being closer to the conference’s floor rather than the opposite. Auburn’s loss to Cal, Mississippi State’s defeat against Toledo, Arkansas’s fall to Oklahoma State, and other non-conference results, tell me that those bottom-tier teams are still bad. The best teams just aren’t as good.
Look – some years, the credit is deserved. You could have a 2019 LSU or a 2008 Florida. There just isn’t that clear elite-level team in 2024.
And I haven’t even discussed the cop out that is the eight-game conference schedule. While other P4 teams are playing difficult games in November, SEC teams get to trot out against opponents like Mercer, UMass, Maine, and New Mexico State. It doesn’t really mean more in the SEC if teams are collectively agreeing to duck each other for one week late in the season.
Second, it’s clear that the challenges presented by the SEC aren’t much different than any other power conference. The Big 12 has 15 teams that are very similar in terms of skill level. The Big Ten does have elite powerhouses along with some challenging travel circumstances. The ACC combines those same travel difficulties with a few teams up there with the country’s best in terms of talent.
I’m not disputing that the SEC is the best conference in college football. It clearly still is. But, especially in 2024, we need context. Every conference in America provides unique difficulties, and it’s very hard to get through any of those leagues unscathed.
It’s about time we gave teams credit for the results they achieve on the field, rather than leaning on preconceived notions we have based on the letters they wear across their chest.
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