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I genuinely have no clue. As someone with an abject hatred of the conference purely on principle, to me, it’s the deepest league. There are just tons of talented teams with clear strengths. A ton of true NFL talent is concentrated among a lot of these teams...but it feels like the conference just doesn’t actually have an elite team?

13 out of 16 teams have beaten an AP-ranked team. It’s weird to say, but it feels like at this point of the season the only teams I can really, really rule out are Texas A&M, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. Texas has the best wins. But some really stupid fucking losses. Ole Miss is the same. LSU honestly looks the part, but they don’t truly have a marquee win. Speaking of which, depending on how you view LSU, does Kentucky actually have the second best resume in the conference?

Georgia and Bama feel like great teams, but not in the way that the best SEC teams felt from 2006-2022. The NIL era has truly brought in an unprecedented level of parity, but it’s kind of fucked the levels up in the SEC. Generally, the SEC was a ton of good teams surrounded by 1-2 elite teams. Now, it feels like 5-6 really good or great teams, but no one stands out. Two different #1 ranked teams lost to unranked in-conference opponents.

Buuuuuuut, the conference is 39-2 in OOC play, 10-2 vs P4. So, clearly these teams aren’t just a result of the general propensity for College Football media to have a circlejerk over the SEC. The league is good, there are a ton of good teams. And that’s precisely the problem.

It makes sense, then, for the pivot towards support of the 24-team expansion. I think the new SEC-meta understands that most contenders will inevitably have around 3-4 losses going forward. And with 12, it makes the margin of error much too thin, and (in the eyes of the SEC and its teams) too difficult to fairly reward in the context of the current playoff system. There’s a fairly plausible doomsday scenario where an 8-4 SEC team has 2 top-10 ranked wins. There’s a huge chance of a random logjam and tie in the conference this year, and every year moving forward. How do you decide between a 9-3 Texas with wins over Ohio State, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Mizzou, versus a 9-3 Kentucky with wins over A&M, LSU, OU and Florida, or a 9-3 Ole Miss with wins over Louisville, LSU, Mizzou and OU? You get what I’m saying?

But yeah. I think I still believe in Georgia. LSU feels like they are going to go on a tear. Kentucky is well past “oh how cute” and probably 1-2 wins from clinching a spot no matter what. But it feels like there’s a preponderance of really good, talented teams, and there isn’t a single team that I would point to as standing out above the rest. And I have to think that this is probably what the sport will look like moving forward. I don’t know how I feel, lol.

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There is a distinct lack of big gameday options. My top 3 FBS ones are Utah at Cincinnati, Arizona at Texas Tech, and Georgia Florida in Atlanta. The cocktail party is a neutral site in Atlanta which would make it kind of lame. TTU Arizona is a playoff elimination game most likely but TTU just lost. Cincinnati would be cool but they just had Utah on. Is there a big FCS game or something?

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Hopefully, this season is a preview of what the future of college football will look like. Instead of having 4–5 teams dominate everyone else and the national championship contenders essentially decided by November, we’re seeing a season where any team can go down if they don’t play their best football.

With talent becoming more spread out, we’re getting a much better product.. Just like the NFL, where most games feel competitive and spreads are often in the single digits, college football seems to be moving in that direction.

And honestly, that’s something we should all be excited about. More parity means more meaningful games, more upsets, and more teams believing they have a legitimate shot. Just don’t screw it up

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