NCAA Football SEC Football

SEC Perceived Superiority Far From A Certainty

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John David Mercer - USA TODAY Sports

John David Mercer – USA TODAY Sports

One thing is abundantly clear, from the initial College Football Playoff Committee rankings, to the weekly Sagarin ratings, to the quaint but perilously close to obsolete AP poll, to the prevailing opinion of just about every talking head east of Salt Lake City — the SEC is the only conference playing real college football this fall. The only teams allowed to lose college football games yet maintain their rankings are SEC teams. Nobody is allowed to lose to anyone except an SEC team and hold serve in the polls. And the SEC should be treated as such when the final four-team championship bracket is released in early December.

But what if all that is dead wrong?

What if the SEC isn’t truly all that this season? What if the reason for the current SEC serf rebellion in the state of Mississippi is more due to a down year in the “big boy” league than the sudden dominance of two teams that haven’t had a whiff of a conference title since LBJ was sworn in (Ole Miss — 1963) or World War II (Mississippi State — 1941)? What if the perceived chasm between the SEC and everyone else isn’t as wide as most think?

The current SEC landscape is peppered with formerly dominant teams that have lost their way. Florida and South Carolina, more often than not, have been their own worst enemies this season and look like shadows of their former selves. The head coaching seats get hotter and hotter in Columbia and Gainesville each passing week. Texas A&M fell off the rails as soon as Johnny Football bought a condo in the Cleveland Flats. Arkansas is in a snail-like rebuilding phase. Georgia, which looks more and more like a nothing-matters-but-the-product FSU North each passing season, can’t win a big game to save themselves. “Les Must Geaux” signs are popping up all over Baton Rouge. A stop watch with a decade hand would be needed to time Tennessee‘s return to national competitiveness let alone national prominence. And the team that has the inside track to the SEC East title and a berth in the SEC Championship game, Missouri, lost at home to an Indiana team that is winless in the Big Ten, lost to Bowling Green and won’t qualify for the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

So what if college football truth this season is actually quite different from the perceived reality we are force fed every day? What if reading glasses are required to accurately gauge the difference between Michigan State and Mississippi State right now? What if a football player as good as Oregon‘s Marcus Mariota has never set foot within 150 miles of Starkville? What if TCU‘s offensive explosion is more solid coaching and technique and less cute public interest frog legs in a weak league? What if Notre Dame runs the table?

What if the SEC is overrated?

Chris Dezelan is a college football writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter, “Like” him on Facebook, and add him to your network on Google.

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