Sure he can as well as the rest that have SEC Dysphobia! I don't like them at all but realize they win the championship 3 to 1 versus all other college football teams. It helps not living in the Southeast where you bump into the many SEC folks that have very little else in their lives that they get joy from.
Yes, that's my point. They don't count until they are played.
You must have me confused with someone else.
You can notice that five of the top ten are SEC West teams. They are ranked so high because they play each other, which means they play a lot of highly ranked teams, which means when they play each other they get ranked high, which means that they play a lot of highly ranked teams, ............
Makes for better tv. People more likely to watch teams with higher rankings play each other.
SEC West Teams have won 10 of the last 20 National Championships. Three of the 7 teams have won NCs. There is a reason they get the high rankings.
Of those three teams, only Alabama has been a consistently good upper level team. Auburn since 2013 has been third or lower in the SEC West much more than not, and the last two years has been at the bottom of the SEC West. LSU won the championship in 2007 and 2017, they have been very up and down. More up than Auburn, but they have had similarly bad years. They made it to the championship game in 2011, and in my opinion should have played someone besides Alabama since they had already played. Hard to judge relative strength if you only ever play with yourselves and never have any relative measurements. Alabama has won 6 since 2009. They are the one team in the SEC that has been a dynasty team in the last decade plus.
Nice rational. What other Conference can make anywhere near the claim the SEC can? That's not even counting FLA and UGA's NCs. FSU and Clemson have won 3 between them. No other ACC team has even sniffed the playoffs and rightfully so. Last year Tenn was on the verge of making the playoffs until Hooker got hurt. The B1G, ACC and Big 12 need to win the significant OOC games on a regular basis. They haven't for 15 or so years!
Forget spin. The SEC brings eyeballs. Lots and lots of eyeballs. That’s why they have a seat. $$$
That is only because when they DO win the OOC games, there is spin that it doesn't matter. Ole Miss is a bottom feeder (until the beat UF). The SEC teams don't care about bowl games, so losing doesn't matter, (but it is absolute proof when they win).
What does a Florida national championship in 2007 have to do with Florida in 2023 though? Florida has had losing records 3 of the last 6 years. Auburn has had losing records the last two years. LSU had a losing season in 2021 and was 5-5 in 2020. Have these teams been good in the past, yea, some of them like LSU are consistently good. That doesn't make them automatically good going forward regardless of results, but their losses damage their reputations far less and receive far more excuses than equivalent teams from other conferences.
When we scheduled Ole Miss, we were better and they weren’t as good. They improved, and we went downhill. Hopefully, we get better now.
I believe @takethepoints' basic premise here, which I agree with in principle if not in specifics, is that we should attempt to control what is controllable about our schedule in terms of selecting opponents during this time frame when we are rebuilding the program. I don't have data, but it would be interesting to see how many other P5 programs routinely schedule 2 P5 opponents as their OOC games. I suspect there are many that do not.
Here are the 10 worst Power Five teams, per ESPN's FPI:
Exactly. It’s a PR marketing ploy.
