SEC haters might want to bury their heads in the sand because there’s bad news regarding future BCS national championships: the SEC’s stranglehold will continue.
This past season represented the best chance for a team outside of the SEC to win the BCS national title in the past five years, but that opportunity slipped away when Wes Bynum nailed a 19-yard field goal as time expired to lift Auburn past Oregon.
The Tigers victory over the Ducks gave the SEC their fifth straight BCS national championship and seventh overall. Without a playoff system in place, it’s come to a point where the SEC champion might just as well be given an automatic berth in the title game to face the next best team.
All kidding aside, determining the champion of college football has essentially become a scenario where the SEC has an inside track to the title game every season. The bad news for the other conferences is that it’s a reality they can’t do much about.
As the 2011 season begins, the best college football teams will have aspirations of winning a national championship, but if anyone has hopes that a team outside the SEC will claim the title next season – forget about it.
The fact is, the SEC will have more teams capable of winning the BCS national championship next season than at any time in the recent past. That’s a scary thought considering how good the conference has been over the past decade.
Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Auburn, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi State and Tennessee are all going to be good next season. The Crimson Tide are among the top two or three programs in the nation with the most talent, and LSU isn’t far behind.
Every one of those teams will have multiple starters returning and all of them have recruiting classes currently rated among the top 25 by all the scouting services.
Even players leaving early to enter the NFL draft won’t have an adverse effect to cause Alabama or LSU from being among the teams with serious BCS title hopes.
But the Crimson Tide and Tigers won’t be the only SEC teams that will be good enough to make an appearance at the Superdome in January 2012. Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas and Auburn could find themselves playing for the national title if things shake out their way.
And any talk of SEC teams playing weak non-conference competition can be quickly dismissed. Most of the league’s teams will have marquee matchups against good BCS schools.
Next season Alabama visits Penn State, LSU faces Oregon and West Virginia, Arkansas will square off against Texas A&M, Auburn visits Clemson, and Georgia takes on Boise State.
Coupled with a conference schedule where every SEC team has to face as many as six teams ranked in the top 25, the league champion will have earned their way to New Orleans.
If you hate the Southeastern Conference and the supposed bias towards the league, you’re going to have more chances to express your hatred in the coming seasons.
The only way to be the best is to beat the best, and the SEC is clearly the best college football conference in the nation.
