It’s Time For The Rest Of The Country To Stop Complaining About SEC Football

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A few years ago, during the height of the SEC’s BCS National Championship streak, the cool thing to do was hop on the SEC bandwagon. As a result, Alabama has more bandwagon fans than real fans and people who didn’t even attend an SEC school are chanting “SEC” at inter-conference games. It is because of the obnoxious bandwagon fans that you can’t even talk about SEC football without someone trying to discredit the SEC in some way. That’s the new cool thing to do: make petty complaints against “SEC bias.” The anti-SEC crowd has become so unbearable that it has almost completely overshadowed the obnoxiousness of SEC fans, which was a feat I previously believed could not be accomplished.

To be upfront, I am a Georgia alumnus and I do believe that the SEC is currently the best and toughest conference in college football. Of course I’m biased, but the data supports my belief, as over the past 15 years, the SEC collectively has a winning record against the other Power Five conferences, and not just by a hair. But that’s not what I’m writing about. The SEC is not invincible — I understand that — and frankly, college football would suck if no one could beat an SEC team. I’m proud of my team playing in a conference where if you get out of your schedule almost unscathed, it’s an amazing feat rather than, well, an expectation (looking at you, Ohio State). The Big 12 is just starting to understand this concept with the emergence of Baylor, TCU, and Kansas State as very good football teams — the Big 12 used to just be Texas or Oklahoma with an occasional spoiler by Oklahoma State. The Pac-12 has become the same way, and hopefully Harbaugh shakes up the Big Ten and makes things more competitive within that conference. That’s the key to strengthening your conference as a whole, but I digress. The bottom line is that the SEC’s success isn’t magic, it’s not arbitrary, it’s not necessarily about money, and whining about it is petty and childish. A few years before “SEC bias” began, I remember Ohio State had to get crushed in two consecutive national championships before it was no longer an automatic shoo-in to play in the championship game, and you didn’t see me taking to Myspace at the time, trying to point out why Ohio State wasn’t as good as people thought it was. College football is cyclical based on where the best coaches and recruits are, plain and simple. Right now, it’s the SEC’s time to shine while it can.

But the SEC hate continues, regardless of that fact. Here’s an example of the ridiculous pettiness of SEC hate. On Twitter, during the Texas Bowl, as Texas got manhandled pretty badly by Arkansas, ESPN’s Danny Kanell unleashed a series of tweets mocking the SEC. He started with this:

Followed by this, as Arkansas started pulling away in the game:

When someone called him out on being salty, he said that although Arkansas was beating Texas, BYU beat Texas by more. By the time I started writing this, that tweet had been deleted, probably because when Danny sobered up, he realized that no one gave a flying fuck if BYU beat Texas by more than Arkansas did. Was he really going to try to make the argument that BYU is a better team than Arkansas? I wish, because I could have used a good laugh last night. He continued with this retweet, trying to compare the quality of the three SEC bowl games to the seven bowl games already played by the ACC, as if these SEC schools really have much of a say in who they play in their bowl games.

When you try to compare three SEC bowl games to seven ACC bowl games, you are really just grasping at straws. Maybe wait for more data to come out so you don’t look like a complete asstard if the SEC starts winning more bowl games? There are a few ACC versus SEC bowl games coming up, so why don’t you wait for those, buddy?

Danny really is just one small example of the obnoxious SEC hate crowd. Everyone remembers Bob Stoops calling out the SEC as overrated, followed by Oklahoma embarrassing ‘Bama in the Sugar Bowl. I’m not going to lie, I did enjoy watching Alabama fans’ reactions to losing by two touchdowns to Oklahoma, but Stoops has been a real anus about the SEC, which made it beautiful to watch his team get trounced in its bowl game this year against Clemson. Maybe he’ll start calling the ACC overrated next.

There is an entire sea of people like Kanell and Stoops running around, looking for every excuse to discredit the SEC, even when an SEC team wins a game. At least Stoops, as much as I hate him, had the balls to beat an SEC team on the field rather than cherry pick statistics to satisfy his hate of the conference. Yes, I know the ACC went 4-0 over the SEC (East) on rivalry weekend (all wins were by less than one possession, by the way, except for the Clemson-South Carolina game) and that’s just great, SEC haters. Good for you. That’s quite an accomplishment for you. But let’s see how the rest of the bowl games go — maybe soon, ACC hate will be the cool new thing and I can go back to enjoying quality football in peace.

    1. GrandpaHammerDong

      These SEC articles are becoming redundant; however, you can’t argue the facts that it is the best conference in the country considering: over the past five drafts, the SEC blows away the field with 241 draft picks. In second, 72 picks behind, is the ACC with 169. The rest of the FBS leagues in the past five drafts: Big Ten with 154, Pac-12 with 150, Big 12 with 124, the now-defunct Big East (for football) with 73.

      11 years ago at 10:18 am
      1. TucoTFM

        Does anybody REALLY argue that there is a better conference than the SEC? No. Just because people call the media SEC Biased and overrated doesn’t automatically mean they think there’s a better conference out there. It just means that sometimes there might be some unexplainable things happening like unwarranted preseason rankings(’13 UF, ’14 SC) and bizarre shit like Miss St. jumping Michigan St in rankings to avoid playing Baylor.

        11 years ago at 1:49 pm
  1. Brobra Bush

    Quit bitchin. College football is an excuse to be drunk from 7am till 7pm on a Saturday. Nothing else.

    11 years ago at 3:23 pm
  2. Frock_Itch

    The SEC is a breeding ground for NFL talent and will continue to be looked at as the best until that stops happening. For fucks sake, LSU alone sent Odell Beckham and Jeremy Hill into the league this year.

    11 years ago at 3:25 pm
    1. marlboroman322

      Cool dude, do you also carry a canvas bag and walk your skinny jean clad ass over to the farmers market to buy organic shoes and watch rugby because it’s a “real sport”?

      11 years ago at 3:41 pm
      1. marlboroman322

        Telling someone they have a dildo in their mouth when they talk shit. TFM.

        11 years ago at 3:47 pm
  3. Frattylightrebels

    Hmm a georgia fan saying other conferences suck when his team lost to an ACC team this year

    11 years ago at 3:39 pm
    1. 5OClockShadow

      The same UGA that beat Ole Miss in back-to-back years, 2011 & 2012, and clobbered the Auburn team that beat Ole Miss in Oxford this year.

      11 years ago at 3:57 pm
      1. johnnyblueballs69

        but only lost in overtime, for the first time since 2008….they even beat Tech the year after Moreno left and Joe Cox was the starting qb fyi

        11 years ago at 11:51 pm
  4. TucoTFM

    With the new playoff system in place, teams are going to be forced to schedule tougher non-conference opponents to separate themselves from other teams with the same record so they don’t get “snubbed” like Baylor and TCU. So when Ole Miss and Miss St. sit there at beat their chest over playing in the almighty SEC West but refuse to schedule an out of conference power 5 team, they’re only hurting themselves. Let em talk because they’re gonna have to run the table to ever see their way into the playoffs.

    11 years ago at 3:48 pm
    1. Dixon Butts

      The SEC is already requiring this by next year I believe. Each team has to play at least one team from a P5 conference each year.

      11 years ago at 7:51 am
      1. TucoTFM

        For 2015:
        Arkansas- Nope
        Ole Miss- Nope
        Miss St- Nope
        Vandy- Nope
        Mizzou- Worthless Uconn
        LSU- Worthless Syracuse

        -The 4 ACC/SEC rivalry week matchups which count but are played too late to impact the rankings too much. Imagine how the year would have played out if Clemson stomped the #9 yard Birds and GT knocked off the #12 Dawgs in week 1. The power shift would affect both conferences for the rest of the year.

        And the rest are at least respectable.
        Bama/Wisc.
        Auburn/Louisville
        UT/Oklahoma
        aTm/ Arizona St.

        The may have all been required to schedule a P5 team for down the road, but not next year.

        11 years ago at 2:34 pm
  5. GoliadSpecial

    Who cares what conference you’re in? If you’re good, you’ll win. Period. I don’t care if you’re Montana School for Unwed Mothers, if you beat good teams, you deserve a shot. You don’t promote your homeowners association because your house is crap, you fix your damn house. Team over Conference every day of the week

    11 years ago at 3:53 pm
    1. 5OClockShadow

      It’s not that simple. Because your conference is composed of the teams you play year in and year out, it directly affects your ability to go to major bowl games and national championship games. Note that each of the 4 teams in the playoff were champions of their conference. The SEC East was a great example of this–Mizzou won the East, even though they lost to UGA, and UGA is still ranked notably higher. UGA beat “good” teams, such as Clemson and Auburn, against whom Mizzou did not even play. Even if UGA had not lost to Georgia Tech, Mizzou still would have had a better chance at a better bowl game or even a playoff berth because they went to the conference championship game.

      11 years ago at 4:31 pm
      1. Big Seth

        We just beat bama with our 3rd string QB how many of you know who your 3rd string QB is?… Exactly. What now bitch?

        11 years ago at 1:17 am
  6. Jimmy buffet

    Or we could enjoy college football for what it is not what it isn’t…just a thought

    11 years ago at 3:55 pm
  7. Lake Superior

    I’d like to point out that that good Kansas State team you mentioned also lost to an FCS team last season…

    11 years ago at 4:03 pm