The SEC dominance has been prevalent across the college football landscape, especially in the College Football Playoff over the past few years. The playoff has undoubtedly been an interesting point when comparing the power of various college football conferences. The SEC has constantly sent their top teams to the playoffs every year and have 5 out of the 8 winners. While you can point at other metrics, it is pretty difficult to argue with more than half of the winners coming from one conference. The dominance has. been established and this year seems no different. The 12-team playoff is on the horizon, and with that in mind, we are going to revisit the current format. What should change if we could change something right now?
The first College Football Rankings came out today and three of the SEC’s teams are featured in the top 6. #1 Tennesee was the team I thought had been the best in college football ever since they beat Alabama. While the AP poll slotted them at 3, Tennesee has definitely been the best team in CFB with their potent offense. Georgia dropping to number 3 was a bit of a surprise. I was a little disappointed to not see the Bulldogs sitting at 2 this week. They have some question marks on defense, but overall they are currently the second-best team. What could have been a #1 vs #2 between Georgia and Tennesee has been ruined this weekend. Although I am really excited to see if anyone can stop this Tennesee offense. Bama came in at #6 which I found to be the appropriate ranking for the Crimson Tide. LSU and Ole Miss are number 10 and 11 respectively, which I was also interested in. What would college football do if we had a 4 team SEC playoff?
Yes, I am well aware that the odds of this occurring are slim to none. But what if? The Bulldogs, Volunteers, and Crimson Tide are already in a position to force the committee to make this decision. While the college football landscape does not look great this year, it creates an ideal situation. The winner of Tennessee/Georgia falls to Alabama in the SEC championship. That leaves three really good one-loss programs in the hunt. The only thing that would be better is Ole Miss being undefeated at this point too. This would give them one loss to Bama and would finish them in the conversation as well. Since that is not the case, the most likely scenario is Ole Miss winning out and complete chaos ensuing in front of them. While that is not likely, I could very well see a potential three SEC team playoff with the Big 10 champion. There is simply a lot of upsets occurring in the Big 12 and Clemson just has not looked great this year.
That brings us back to the main point of this article, does the SEC deserve an automatic bid. The answer is yes, there is no doubt in my head that the winner of the game between Tennessee and Georgia belongs in the playoff. It should honestly be an automatic bid game. I really like the way the Volunteers are playing this year, but I have to wonder about that defense. If they can shore up on that side of the ball they are my national champions. While there is a lot of work to be done till then, the SEC domiance is already secure.
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