No, SEC fans, owning half the College Football Playoff spots isn't a birthright

Just two weeks remain in the 2024 college football regular season. We'll then have conference championship week followed immediately by the reveal of the first ever 12-team College Football Playoff bracket. As is always the case, it's the time of year where fans and media lose their collective minds over the weekly playoff rankings reveal, though it seems like the 12-team era has suddenly made the discussions even more hostile than before.

Perhaps that's because, even in an era where 12 teams get into the field, it's impossible to not have some level of controversy over who gets in. And now that we're having to sort though more teams, we must consider more teams that are by no means playoff locks. It's easier to yell about teams when their flaws are more obvious.

But within these debates of which teams should and shouldn't get in is an all too familiar argument in this sport, and it's a talking point that needs to be put to bed.

The SEC should not be granted the majority of College Football Playoff bids based solely on reputation

SEC fans and SEC-friendly media are working overtime right now to spread the narratives that it would be travesty if any of these clearly elite SEC teams were unjustly excluded from the College Football Playoff in favor of obviously inferior programs such as Indiana, Notre Dame, or frankly anyone from either the Big 12, ACC, or Group of 5 (they aren't just mad about at-larges, they're mad about auto-bids too).

The argument is that despite most of these SEC contenders having suffered multiple losses, they are unquestionably better than any of the lowly teams from other conferences because they've had to go through the grind of a SEC schedule and should not just be rewarded for that, but should honestly receive preferential treatment. I mean this is best conference in American we're talking about!

It's an argument built on years and years of narrative-pushing that every team from the SEC is inherently superior because "we just do football better down South." And perhaps there was a time that was legitimately true. But that time is not now. Because when you look at the resumes of these playoff-contenders and take off the SEC-tinted glasses, all of the sudden that body of work isn't all that impressive.

Texas' best win is against four-loss Vanderbilt. Alabama lost to four-loss Vanderbilt. Tennessee lost to five-loss Arkansas. Ole Miss lost to six-loss Kentucky and four-loss LSU. And of course Georgia has losses to those Alabama and Ole Miss teams.

It's not like we're talking about teams that are without flaws.

And I can hear the rebuttals. "Indiana's strength of schedule is awful!" "BYU lost to Kansas!" "Notre Dame lost to freaking Northern Illinois!"

Exactly! They're flawed teams, just like every single one of the SEC teams fighting for a playoff spot. Why are the flaws of the SEC acceptable while the flaws of teams from the rest of the country are not?

Oh, it's because of the top-to-bottom strength of the mighty SEC, right? It's just such a great league that even the four or five-loss teams are so strong and losing to them is understandable? Yeah, about that...

The Vanderbilt team that beat Alabama and is Texas' best win? They lost to 2-8 Georgia State of the Sun Belt. The Arkansas team that beat Tennessee? They lost to 3-7 Oklahoma State of the Big 12. The Kentucky team that beat Ole Miss? There's no need to point to another result when they're 4-6.

These are objectively bad losses. There's no spinning it. And again, the SEC's playoff contenders aren't alone in having issues. But stop with the "SEC supremacy" chest-beating to try and justify getting every one of them in the field. It's not 2012 anymore. Being a SEC team doesn't inherently mean you're better.

You can talk about power ratings and hypothetical point spreads all you want. They have their place, and they're good for contextualizing things. But you know what? Underdogs win. A lot. Games are played on the field, and results have to matter.

No, that doesn't mean strength of schedule shouldn't matter. I understand why it's a part of the discussion, and it should be. But it simply cannot be the be-all and end-all when we are comparing teams that all have flawed resumes to a certain degree.

The fact is practically every team in contention for an at-large berth at the moment has some sort of red flag. You cannot definitively say who the 12 best are. You cannot definitively say who the 12 most deserving are. And you certainly cannot make that distinction based on whether or not a team is playing in the SEC.

Every one of these SEC teams fighting for a spot has had the chance to remove all doubt about their worthiness of making the playoff. They failed to do that. So now, they're rightfully going to be judged against everyone else, and conference affiliation should not be the determining factor as to whether or not they make it.