The SEC is no longer the dominant conference in college football. Not only has the Big Ten won the last three national championships, but the SEC has also been soundly beaten in postseason games. But that’s not stopping the league from puffing out its chest once again.
And it just so happens that their billion-dollar rights partners at ESPN are helping push the narrative yet again.
It’s a cycle that seems to recur every year and makes college football fans feel as if they’re living their own version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day.
It’s a cycle that repeats itself continuously. SEC teams often have artificially inflated preseason rankings. Teams that have good early starts are rewarded with astronomical gains. The teams that lose aren’t punished because of the perceived strength of the opposition. Even though the SEC has been called out, the conference’s adherents (including plenty of voices on ESPN) treat it as definitive proof of superiority, even though it’s based more on conjecture and hypothetical wins than on what happens in reality.
And now the cycle is beginning all over again.
On Tuesday, the ESPN Insights page on X posted a list of teams ranked by the top strength of schedule coming into the 2026 college football season. The post touted the SEC expanding to a nine-game conference schedule and that, according to their metrics, every SEC team made the Top 20 of the rankings. Four Big Ten teams made the cut and none from any other conference.
This season, the SEC will start a 9-game conference schedule 🗓️
A likely result of the additional conference game is that every SEC team has a strength of schedule in the Top-20, according to ESPN Analytics. pic.twitter.com/F5o3b9qomt
— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) July 28, 2026
Immediately, social media was filled with comments and complaints that not only accused the network of stumping once again for their rights partner, but also the idea of devising strength-of-schedule metrics before a game has even been played.
“Who has the strongest SOS?”
“The SEC.”
“Why?”
“Because they play a bunch of SEC teams.”
“How good are SEC teams?”
“Really good, because they play a bunch of SEC teams.”
“How do you know if SEC teams are better than teams from other conferences?”
“They are better, because… https://t.co/cVUDLJ2Exo
— CougarStats (@CougarStats) July 28, 2026
ESPN owns the SEC Network.
ESPN owns the Playoff broadcast.
ESPN also builds the strength-of-schedule model that decides which SEC teams belong in the Playoff.
That’s not a ranking. That’s manipulation. https://t.co/4aXU1Rrbnv— Miles Shoaf || MSR (@milesashoaf) July 28, 2026
Rhett Lashlee at ACC media days last week:
“Whenever some of y’all figure out how we can have preseason strength of schedules and power rankings before anybody has played a game, y’all let me know.” https://t.co/ZfF3Uw1SQ2
— Steve Helwick (@s_helwick) July 28, 2026
You see, the SEC is tough because they play the SEC who plays the SEC which is tough because they play the SEC who is tough because they play the SEC who plays the SEC https://t.co/52ZI5NmV1E
— Shaloobys (@shaloobys) July 29, 2026
We’ve finally fully realized the SEC Strength of Schedule feedback loop https://t.co/qV0w4KShsX
— CF After Dark (@AfterDarkCF) July 28, 2026
ESPN wants you to believe that a conference that went 1-8 in the postseason vs P4 opponents, is much tougher now that they have the same amount of conf games as everyone else. https://t.co/HgSS88N1YI
— B1Gadier General Daniel A. Lanning (@DuckDMB) July 29, 2026
Allegations that ESPN improperly favors the SEC will always follow the company as long as subjective factors like this influence who has an opportunity to play for a national championship. We are supposed to believe that Ole Miss has one of the Top 5 hardest schedules in the country when they play teams like Auburn, Mississippi State, Missouri, and Florida? When their non-conference lineup features Wofford and Charlotte? Where they miss out on Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas A&M? While it may work with whatever analytics ESPN has produced, it doesn’t pass the common sense test.
The sensible thing to do would be to abolish preseason rankings and only start the process when the College Football Playoff committee releases its own rankings. Give us time to see who is actually good and who is not, and use what happens on the field to evaluate teams instead of projections and opinions. But expecting anything sensible to happen in the college football world means it’s not likely to occur anytime soon.
About Matt Yoder