The SEC has long been thought of as the powerhouse conference of college football. But just how good would some of the teams that find themselves as middle-of-the-road teams in conference play fare in other conferences?
Former Alabama head coach turned ESPN college football analyst Nick Saban raised this question during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday, saying that there are “subjective issues” with the sport on how to rank a team’s success in one conference compared to another. He went on to raise the hypothetical question of how well a team like Ole Miss would be in the Big 12 conference instead of the SEC.
“The subjective part of this that you can never fix is the conferences are not equal,” said Saban. “They are not equal in depth of good teams. Nor are they equal in the quality of the best teams. To give you an example, let’s just take Ole Miss so I just stay away from this Alabama thing. So if Ole Miss played in the Big 12, what would their record be? That’s the kind of subjective issues that we have in college football that is never going to change. Unless we put the best 40 teams in college football and put them in a league, very similar to the 32 teams that are in the NFL.
“The competition level is probably going to be more equal. So that now you can actually say that (you are) beating good teams because you are playing good teams all the time. I’ve always said that nobody should play Mercer. Nobody should play a 1-AA school. Everybody should have to play these top 40 teams. And then you would have a better idea of who the best teams are. But consistency and performance means something. And that’s why in Ole Miss and Alabama’s case, they didn’t have consistency and performance. They lost to teams they probably shouldn’t have lost to. So there should be a penalty for that as well.”
Nick Saban tells @PatMcAfeeShow there are “subjective issues” in college football that “are never going to change.” 😅
“If Ole Miss played in the Big 12, what would their record be?” pic.twitter.com/Lzz8qFxwkA
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) November 27, 2024
What somewhat disproves Saban’s point is the fact that the Texas Longhorns, a team which moved from the Big 12 to the SEC this season, currently sits atop the SEC.
While Oregon’s situation is slightly different in its first year in the Big Ten, the Ducks have beaten the likes of Ohio State and Michigan in their first year in what was supposed to be a more difficult conference than the Pac-12.
Truth be told, it’s impossible to know how a team like Ole Miss would do in another conference. It really comes down to what narrative you would prefer to use when deciding which teams are truly the cream of the crop in college football.
Would you prefer a team like Ole Miss or Alabama with a perceived higher level of competition? Or does on-field consistency as we see from teams like Arizona State or BYU in the Big 12, or teams like Clemson and SMU in the ACC, take precedence?
On the most recent CFP ranking show on Tuesday, we saw both Clemson and SMU inside of the 12-team field while Alabama and Ole Miss were on the outside looking in. So thus far, it seems like the lack of consistency is hurting Alabama and Ole Miss.
Only time will tell whether this holds up. But as Saban noted, there truly is a dilemma for the CFP committee as to how they judge the strength of schedule of the SEC.
