Graduate defensive back Osahon Irabor makes a tackle on senior wide receiver TJ Jones during the 2013 season. ASU lost 34-37 at the Shamrock classic in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Dominic Valente)In the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of attention directed at the SEC’s heralded position atop the rankings and the college football playoff leaderboard. Mississippi State (1), Auburn (3) and Alabama (5) are among the latest contenders.
By now, fans from other conferences are tired of the SEC’s supremacy. Teams from the SEC won nine of 16 BCS national championships. In the old system, many SEC schools qualified in the 11th hour, a benefit other conferences wouldn’t get.
In 2006, Florida jumped ahead of USC and Michigan after winning the SEC championship. In 2007, LSU catapulted from No. 7 in the BCS to the title game in the last week of the season. In 2011, Alabama won a national title without even winning its own division. And just last year, undefeated Ohio State lost in the last week, which opened the door for Auburn to play in the National Championship (though the Tigers lost).
The SEC teams have proved their worth in the big games. Here’s a quick summary of each major conference's performance in the past decade:
The SEC was one over 60 percent of its bowl games and an even 60 percent of its out of conference regular season matchups with other Power Five schools.
Among the other Power Five conference, only the Big 12 and Pac-12 come close to rivaling those numbers.
Both conferences have won 51 percent of their out of conference Power Five games and the Big 12 has won 57 percent of its bowl games. The Pac-12 has won 55 percent of them.
It’s no different down south in 2014. The five teams in SEC West have lost one non-divisional game all season and have away-from-home wins against No. 7 Kansas State, No. 23 West Virginia and No. 25 Wisconsin.
Success hasn’t come without criticism. Recently, a rallying cry has emerged regarding SEC bias in the media.
Some of the same SEC bias crowd claims Pac-12 schools are disrespected in the polls because its games start too late for east coast viewers to watch.
But from an analytical standpoint, I found that no Power Five conference was favored more than the Pac-12 in the AP poll, relative to the Coaches’ poll, beginning with the 2012 preseason poll.
On average, the Pac-12 teams are ranked more than half a spot higher in the AP poll than the Coaches poll.
True, the only other conference that had its teams ranked higher in the AP than the Coaches was the dreaded SEC but even then, it was by a lesser margin than the Pac-12 programs.
Until this year, the Coaches' poll represented one-third of how teams qualified for the national championship, while the AP poll's last relevant season was 2004.
The lack of exposure may still exist with Pac-12 schools, but the coaches (or whoever fills out their ballots) in recent years look at the conference worse than the media does. These results don’t mean there isn’t a negative perception against the conference, just that any supposed “bias” is greater from the coaches.
And if SEC teams are getting the benefit of the doubt, any advantage the conference has was earned.
Reach the columnist at jmjanss1@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @jjanssen11
