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College Football: BCS Rankings Show The Innate Difficulty Of Competing In The SEC

by Christopher McIntosh
10/17/2007

The first BCS rankings came out on Sunday and the SEC should be ecstatic.

Seven of the top 21 teams all are proud members of what is almost universally acknowledged as the toughest, meanest, and most importantly, the best conference in the country.

And not a single one of those seven controls whether or not they have a shot at the national title game. In order for any one of these football teams to be playing come the first week in January, someone else has to lose. Any one of them could run the table and be left wondering.

Because three teams are both undefeated and ranked higher than the highest SEC team left (LSU at number four).

Plenty of people have written about how the SEC is underrated and undervalued, but that ship has sailed. There are times that this is the case. But this ain't one of them.

There's also been a whole lot of ink spilled on the need for a playoff in college football - and while I'll contribute some money to that political campaign, that's not exactly what this is about either.

You could look at what's happened and say it's an anomaly. "It's been a weird year, don't you know? Stanford over USC? Appalachian State over Michigan?"

I say no. I think the fundamental structure of the SEC (and by extension college football) makes it so that it is uniquely difficult to make it to the BCS title game even when you may be highly deserving.

Now difficult doesn't mean impossible. I obviously was around to watch (and predict) UF's demolition of Ohio State last year. But Florida was not undefeated.

Here's how the power of the conference works against sending one team to the great game.

1. All losses are created equal. Ohio State is currently number one in the polls and are 7-0. They have also beaten one ranked team - #23 Purdue - and have no ranked teams on their schedule, except for Michigan who's pulling up the rear at 25. LSU had beaten number 9 VA Tech, number 12 South Carolina, and number 9 Florida before playing well and losing in OT at Kentucky.

So. LSU loses in OT on the road to what the BCS has determined is the 7th best team and has wins against number 6, number 15, and number 11. OSU has beaten no one of note but is undefeated and plays in the big 10 a conference which only has OSU and the fraudulent Michigan ranked in the top 25.

But the math is simple. OSU, no losses. LSU, one loss. QED, LSU is ranked below Ohio State. Anyone want to bet on what the line would be if LSU played OSU tomorrow? What about BC, the number 3 team in the country? South Florida? I'll start at 14 and go up.

2. Non-conference versus conference opponents. SEC programs know that there will be years like this one where the conference is exceptionally strong. Schedules are made many, many years in advance and present a dilemma. Do you schedule stronger non-conference games so that you can boost your strength of schedule rating, but risk taking a loss out of conference? Or do you schedule cupcakes and hope that the strength of your conference schedule will win out and prevent travesties like 12-0 Auburn from playing in the national title game - an exclusion some attribute to their scheduling out of conference minnows instead of adding to an already potentially brutal schedule.

3. The championship game. I realize many other conferences have it, but there are some notable ones who don't - the Big 10 and the Pac 10 to name a couple. I am not saying that OSU and USC made the title games year after year because they didn't have to play a conference championship game, but it certainly makes things easier.

And more to the point, in the SEC it makes it damn near impossible to run the table. Win your side of the conference and your rivalry games and you're rewarded with the best the other side's got. If there's balance, that game could be a coin flip. If not, a team that got lucky and say, caught the SEC West in a down year, still has to go through the SEC East winner and the odds of both halves of the conference having down years is slim to none.

Where's this leave us? In a bit of a quandary. Until voters in polls are willing to say that you can lose and jump ahead of a team that won - a fact that Hawaii has to love given their ranking and double escapes from overtime with teams that sound like I-AA programs - and simply rank teams as they see them, it's going to be difficult. It's also going to create problems when a team in a fair to mediocre "major" conference runs the table and an LSU type team has to be told that they're not good enough.

Thankfully, this hasn't been too much of an issue (Auburn notwithstanding) as usually only one team or less finishes undefeated from BCS conferences, but it does point out an interesting problem. It used to be the biggest fear for the BCS was what happened if three teams finished undefeated, or everyone had one loss (say four or more teams).

What happens if Boston College loses (likely), but OSU and South Florida don't?

This year the biggest nightmare might be what the BCS committee prays for every season.

Two undefeated teams.

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