Colin Cowherd shared the worst College Football take of the year on Friday, claiming that the SEC not only doesn't deserve the hype it gets as a conference, but it resembles the Mountain West more than it does a Power 4 conference.
Cowherd proclaimed, "The SEC, formerly known as the dominating college football conference…it looks like the Mountain West with bigger stadiums. That’s what I see." Of course, this was a month after the SEC had the most schools selected to the CFP field, with the Georgia Bulldogs, Ole Miss Rebels, Texas A&M Aggies, Oklahoma Sooners, and Alabama Crimson Tide all making it, though not all of them rightfully.
This was also the same day the Oregon Ducks, not the Ole Miss Rebels, embarrassed themselves in the CFP semifinal round. Oregon took a 34-point loss to the Indiana Hoosiers. Ole Miss came down to the very last play in a 31-27 loss to the Miami Hurricanes, who had just beaten the supposedly otherworldly Ohio State Buckeyes 24-14.
Rumors of the SEC's demise are embarrassingly exaggerated. The Mountain West has had one CFP entry, the Boise State Broncos, and they were destroyed by the Penn State Nittany Lions last year. The CFP selection committee changed its criteria to eliminate the chance of a No. 4 seed being as disappointing as the MWC's lone bid.
SEC needs a CFP national champion in 2027
Things aren't as bad as Cowherd says, but the SEC isn't in a good way right now. Three straight years without a team in the title game is a bad look and seemingly dispels narratives about the gauntlet of an SEC schedule.
Greg Sankey's conference needs a champion next year. Not only is the Big Ten moving ahead of them, but if Miami beats Indiana, the ACC will all of a sudden have a revived brand power, and at the SEC's expense.
It'll be hard for Sankey to return to the CFP negotiating table and make the same demands for more auto-bids with no taste of the mountaintop in the rev-share era for one of his member schools.
Why give the SEC auto-bids it clearly hasn't earned? Something's got to give soon for the "It Just Means More" conference. It needs a champion in 2027, whether it's Arch Manning's Texas Longhorns, Lane Kiffin's LSU Tigers, or anyone in between.