The Indiana Hoosiers' road to their first College Football Playoff National Championship in school history may run through the SEC. That's what ESPN analyst and former NFL and Texas Longhorns linebacker Sam Acho believes, anyway.
Specifically, Acho believes the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide stand in the way. Alabama has Indiana next in the Rose Bowl, while UGA would have to defeat the Ole Miss Rebels in the Sugar Bowl and defeat either the Ohio State Buckeyes or Miami Hurricanes in the Fiesta Bowl to meet IU in the CFP.
“Don’t hold me to this, but I think I had Indiana playing Georgia and Indiana beating Georgia in the natty. I’ve got to see if Alabama made the necessary (pass-protection) changes that can have them potentially beating Indiana. That would be the only thing," Acho told The Arizona Republic's Bob McManaman when asked to give his CFP title game prediction.
Acho has SEC ties as a player and an analyst. He's almost contractually obligated to claim the Tide and Dawgs are the only teams that could stop the Hoosiers. The Buckeyes, who may as well be CBS's golden goose in the ratings department, along with the Oregon Ducks, certainly get no love from anyone from the ESPN family of networks, Acho included here.
If anything, ESPN is already setting up a narrative that boxes out an out-of-nowhere Big Ten school with practically zero football history, like Indiana. They have to finish the job, or else risk being the team that drastically failed short of expectations.
College Sports Wire's Matt Zemek sees IU and OSU as being an overly daunting task for the two remaining SEC teams in the field that are being given any chance to win it all.
"Given that Alabama is unlikely to beat Indiana, the only real hope for a national championship from the SEC is Georgia, and yet, the Dawgs will probably have to go through Ohio State in the semifinals before even reaching the title game. Seeing how poorly SEC teams have played in the playoff -- remember, Alabama didn't really play a great game against OU; the Sooners were merely worse -- it's hard to be confident in UGA versus Ohio State," Zemek wrote.
2025 CFP a potential full changing of the guard from the SEC to the B1G
Needless to say, Indiana beating Alabama and Ohio State, assuming they get past Miami, defeating Georgia or Ole Miss would be the end of any SEC supremacy conversations in College Football for the foreseeable future. Three straight Big Ten titles with rev-share fully in effect would be as clear a statement as possible.
Can the SEC keep up with the spending rat race? The Texas Longhorns can. The TAMU Aggies might be able to.
Otherwise, programs in the "It Just Means More" conference need to refine their pitches and prove that slogan to recruits who could find bigger paychecks in the B1G.