The SEC proved that "It Just Means More" just isn't true at all this weekend with two games' worth of standard-lowering play from the Alabama Crimson Tide, Oklahoma Sooners, and TAMU Aggies in the College Football Playoff's first round. The former two played a 34-24 barnburner that saw the Tide come back from a 17-0 first-half deficit, while the latter lost a 10-3 slopfest with numerous missed field goals and underwhelming quarterback play from Miami's Carson Beck and, especially, TAMU's Marcel Reed.
That's what OutKick's Ian Miller believes, anyway.
Miller claimed that the conference needs to lose its preferential treatment, the claim that no non-SEC school can handle an SEC schedule, and the belief that there's supremacy in a conference that didn't make the last two CFP title games and is at serious risk of missing it this year with the Indiana Hoosiers and Ohio State Buckeyes in Alabama, the Georgia Bulldogs, and Ole Miss Rebels' way.
Miller condemned the SEC's superiority for coming from when the rules in College Football were a world's difference from where they are now, when the Tide and Dawgs were winning titles without pay-to-play rev share and an equal playing field for every team.
"The Alabama-Oklahoma game obviously pitted two SEC teams against each other. So how could it undermine the SEC superiority arguments? Because it was an awful game, played by two teams that looked far, far, from invincible. Oklahoma's punter literally dropped the ball on one play, handing Alabama free points. The two teams combined averaged about 1.4 yards per carry. Alabama had four first downs in the first half and was tied 17-17, because Sooners quarterback John Mateer threw one of the worst passes you'll ever see for an easy pick-six," Miller prefaced before saying, "It was awful. The type of game that would have led to endless criticism from ESPN and SEC fans, had it matched up teams from a different conference.
"Then there's Saturday's Miami-Texas A&M game ... Texas A&M was awful against Miami. The Aggies scored three points, at home, against an ACC team that had a questionable case to reach the playoff at all. This is exactly the type of game the SEC is hypothetically undefeated in, and A&M was lucky to even be in the game at all.
"Does this mean the Aggies shouldn't have made the playoff? No, of course not. They deserved to make it. But the implicit assumption that simply playing in the SEC means team X is better than team Y is obviously not remotely accurate. That's the assumption that the college football world has been operating on. For years. Mostly because of the success of Alabama and Georgia."
SEC needs Georgia, Ole Miss, or Alabama to win it all this year
If Ohio State or Indiana wins it all, Big Ten fanbases can rightfully start acting like the SEC's have been acting. It's not like Tony Pettiti isn't making the same kind of demands from the CFP selection committee behind the scenes that Greg Sankey has been making. Pettiti just comes off infinitely more reasonable.
Sankey's conference desperately needs UGA, Ole Miss, or Alabama to win it all this year. It was helpful that the Florida Gators won March Madness and the LSU Tigers on the sixth-straight College World Series title for the SEC, but football is what pays the bills.
And the B1G seems to be where the money's at these days.