The official College Football Playoff seedings will be unveiled on Sunday, which means conference commissioners are spending championship Saturday campaigning and making arguments as to why they shouldn’t be left out of the four-team field.
Despite the SEC’s “it just means more” mantra and its overall arrogance in its belief that it is the best league in college football, commissioner Greg Sankey was doing just that on Saturday, campaigning hard for the conference on ESPN’s College GameDay.
Sankey’s argument was that, even if No. 1 undefeated Georgia loses to Alabama in the SEC title game on Saturday, then the SEC should not be left completely out of the playoff. To make his case a bit more poignant, Sankey evoked the words of the wise philosopher Big Bird:
“That’s not the real world of college football. Let’s go back to like ‘Sesame Street’ so we’re really basic — one of these things is not like the other, and that’s the Southeastern Conference.”
"Let's go back to like Sesame Street … one of these things is not like the other, and that's the Southeastern Conference."
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on teams competing with Georgia and Alabama for CFP spots 👀#CollegeGameDay pic.twitter.com/AQClnQ7Nn9
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) December 2, 2023
While this is an argument that works most seasons, it really doesn’t hold water this time. A lot of folks believe that Sankey is the smartest man in college football, but he just sounds cocky and smug here.
Yes, Georgia and Alabama are head and shoulders above a lot of college football teams, but the rest of the SEC? To quote GameDay’s Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”
Teams like Texas, Florida State, Washington, Oregon, Michigan and Ohio State would likely dog-walk Missouri and Ole Miss – who finished second in their SEC divisions behind UGA and Bama. Those teams would also probably give the Bulldogs and the Crimson Tide good fights, and beating them outright can’t be ruled out. We all saw how close Ohio State was to beating Georgia in the playoff last year (and this UGA team ain’t as good as that one), and we all saw FSU beat LSU and Texas beat Bama in Tuscaloosa this season.
The path to the College Football Playoff for each of the top-8 teams in contention
The SEC went 7-9 against the other Power Five conferences this season. The ACC went 10-9.
Quickly, let’s review the SEC’s best non-conference wins this season:
- Ole Miss beating a Michael Pratt-less Tulane, 37-20.
- Missouri topping a then-ranked No. 15 Kansas State.
- Kentucky winning at then-ranked No. 10 Louisville.
- Georgia beating Georgia Tech by… eight points?
- Alabama winning 17-3 at… South Florida?
You could make this same case for the non-conference schedules of Washington and Michigan too, but the Huskies beat five ranked Pac-12 teams and finished the season undefeated. They have to be in. Michigan, if they beat Iowa on Saturday night, would also finish undefeated. They have to be in. The same goes for Florida State should it beat Louisville – regardless of who is playing quarterback for FSU.
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That leaves one spot. If Georgia wins, they’d be undefeated and would deserve it. If Alabama beats the Dawgs, things get messy. If Texas beats Oklahoma State, we will then have a situation where three one-loss teams are vying for the final spot. We’d have a Texas team that beat Alabama, an Alabama team that beat Georgia, and a Georgia team whose best win was at home against Missouri.
Logic says to reward winning. Common sense says that, in this scenario, Texas should make the playoff.
Sorry, Mr. Sankey, your argument doesn’t work this year. But the College Football Playoff committee doesn’t always listen to logic and common sense, so the SEC might be rewarded after all.