When Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC in 2024, the conference became stacked with some of the top programs in the country, top to bottom. While on the surface, the depth of the conference seems like a good thing, it hurt them in 2024.
Despite the SEC feeling that three-loss teams like Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina should have made the playoff, they were kept out in favor of two-loss programs in other conferences. Now, amid playoff expansion talks, one analyst fears that it may hurt programs like the Texas Longhorns even more.
Is the SEC Depth a Disadvantage For Potential Playoff Expansion?
There has been talk about potentially expanding the College Football Playoff to a 16-team format with a 4-4-2-2-1 model where the SEC and Big Ten both get four automatic bids, the Big 12 and ACC both get two, and the Group of Five gets one, with three at-large bids remaining.
Amid these talks, the Big Ten wants to see the SEC go to a nine-game conference schedule as opposed to the current eight games that it currently plays. This distinction has caused a lot of controversy between the two conferences.
While playoff expansion in theory would make it easier for an SEC team like Texas to make the playoff, the SEC fears playing an extra conference game because of the situation last year, where teams in the conference were ultimately punished for losing too many times in conference play.
Texas Longhorns analyst, Patrick Davis, who hosts the “Texas Sports Unfiltered” podcast, broke down why playing an extra conference game would put teams like Texas at a disadvantage, while giving the Big Ten an advantage.
“The Big Ten is continuing to argue that the SEC really needs to play another conference game, because it’s unfair to the college football world that you guys aren’t losing more games,” Davis said sarcastically.
He later mocked the Big Ten further, “We don’t want to play you in the playoff because you’re going to beat us because your better teams then us, but we don’t want to play you, so if there’s any way you guys could knock yourself off, that’d be great. That’s the Big Ten’s plan.”
You can see Davis’ point of view here, as top to bottom, the SEC does appear to have a better conference than the Big Ten; however, it’s important to note that the national champion the past two seasons has been a Big Ten program.
Playoff expansion talks haven’t made much ground for this exact reason. The SEC wants the easiest path possible to make it, and the Big Ten wants the easiest path possible to make it.
Expansion would give both conferences more automatic qualifiers, but if the SEC is forced to play more conference games, as Davis points out, it could put them at a disadvantage in terms of at-large bids.
