I’m not talking about Michigan or Ohio State or ND. Those are the 3 northern schools who survived. I’m talking about all those teams who have fallen off when the southern teams rose. Illinois, Rutgers, BC, Syracuse, Minnesota, Maryland, Iowa, etc. Heck, GT is a victim of it. We fell off the map after integration and the powerhouse southern teams arose.
I have zero emotion in most things other than GT. But outside of Columbus, Ann Arbor, and South Bend the north is dead regarding college football. My family is from central PA so I have a ton of Penn State and Pitt cousins, Uncles, Aunts, etc. None of them follow the sport like they did in the 80’s because, like GT, they can’t truly compete on this unlevel field of money and that players don’t go north.
The SEC integrated in 1967 when Kentucky became the first SEC school to have black players on the team. The first BCS title game was held in 1998. Between 1967 and 1997, the SEC won at least a share of a national title 6 times in 30 years, and Alabama was 4 of them.
The first BCS game was held in 1998, and ESPN started SEC TV in 2009. In the 10 years between 1998 and 2008 the SEC won 4 national titles.
From the first year of SEC TV in 2009 until the last year of the BCS in 2013 the SEC won 4 of 5 available national titles, and had a representative in every title game, including an all-SEC final.
SEC Network replaced SEC TV in 2014, which was also the first year of the CFP. Between 2014 and 2022 the SEC won 6 of the 9 available national titles. They’ve had a representative in every iteration of the CFP (the only P5 to do so), they’ve had a representative in every title game but one, and there’s been 2 all-SEC title games.
So a rundown. Between the SEC’s integration in 1967 and ESPN’s creation of SEC TV in 2009, the SEC won a share of 11 national titles in 43 seasons (25%)
Since the creation of SEC TV, there have been more seasons where the national title game was 2 SEC teams (2011, 2017, 2021) than there were with none (2014). The SEC has won 10 titles in 14 seasons (71%), and is the only conference to never be left out of the playoff.
The SEC always won their fair share of titles, but isn’t it interesting that immediately after the biggest proponent of college sports started a deal with the SEC they started dominating in a way never seen before? ESPN controls the narratives of the college sports landscape. Them being heavily invested in the participants of the sport should be a conflict of interest, and clearly it is. But it’s never stopped them, and it never will unless it’s taken to a court of law (which it won’t be).
Long story short, yeah the southern teams caught up to the northern teams, but there has been actual propaganda spewed across the largest media outlet in the sport for a couple of decades now, and that is a large reason why we are where we are now. SEC bias and propaganda is real. And even if it doesn’t affect the polls or the selection committee (which it does), it
does impact the public perception. That impacts where athletes decide to go, where money gets spent, who watches what games, the legacies of coaches, etc. It’s honestly astonishing that it’s been allowed to go on for as long as it has, and will continue to do so.
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