If the SEC were the Big XII

The SEC is the best conference in the country. Any team that can survive a schedule as tough as theirs has to be an automatic qualifier for the National Championship game, regardless of how many other teams post similar records in lesser conferences, right?

This argument has always bothered me as a Big XII fan. Yes, the SEC has won the last six national championship games and I take nothing away from them for that. They are certainly deserving of recognition and acknowledgement as having some of the best teams in the country and I don’t propose any argument against their titles. But the blind coronation of the SEC as being by far the best conference in the country is  overblown, over rated and it nauseates me.

So, I did a little simulation of what the SEC would look like if it had a round robin format similar to the Big XII. Everyone plays everyone. Toe to toe, head to head, no longer able to boast three 1 loss teams or pad your schedule with a fourth cupcake team before rivalry week.

I took the league’s elite and filled in the rest with the next of the best.

To avoid my bias creeping in and making the win/loss records look worse than best case scenario, I gave it the best case scenario. No upsets were counted unless they happened in real life, i.e. Texas A&M over Alabama. Outside of actual head to head match ups this year, I chose the “better” team to beat the “lessor” team. This is favorable to overall records as you don’t see a Baylor beating a K-State or a Iowa State beating a TCU, but I don’t claim the SEC to be as balanced as the Big XII, so it is what it is.

I also took non-conference losses into consideration for the two teams that had them. You can argue they may not have matched up against the mighty Big East or B1G (Syracuse and Northwestern), but I’m leaving them on there.

Here are the results:

1. Alabama (8-1; 11-1) one loss to Texas A&M but still likely in the top 2
2. Georgia (7-2; 10-2) losses to South Carolina and Alabama keeps Georgia in the top 10
3. Florida (7-2; 10-2) losses to Alabama and Georgia and Florida is still in the top 10
4. LSU (6-3; 9-3) losses to Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Top 15
5. Texas A&M (6-3; 9-3) losses to Georgia, Florida and LSU. Top 15
6. South Carolina (5-4; 8-4) losses to Florida, Texas A&M, LSU, Alabama. Top 25
7. Vanderbilt (3-6; 5-7) conference losses to everyone except Mississippi State, Missouri and Auburn and a loss to Northwestern leave this team out of the bowl season.
8. Mississippi State (2-7; 5-7) only conference wins were Auburn and Missouri.
9. Missouri (1-8; 3-9) Beat Auburn. Lost to Syracuse in the non-conference slate.
10. Auburn (0-9; 3-9) Hey, we have Kansas. This is fair.

So, instead of six teams in the top 10 in BCS standings, you get six teams in the top 25. You also only get six teams bowl eligible. I could go over another scenario that got nine teams playing in late December, early January, but then you would look like the Big XII record wise, and you wouldn't want that, would you?