Brandon Walker's SEC Bias is Out of Control

Nobody is a bigger Brandon Walker fan than I am. He's the hardest worker at Barstool behind, Dave, Big Cat, or anybody else who has more of a say over my job status than Brandon does. I consider Mostly Sports and Unnecessary Roughness appointment television streaming. So because of that, I'm up to my eyeballs in Brandon Walker takes. I hear them every day of my life. A lot of them I agree with. Some of them I don't. Typically when I disagree with him, I do what any rational human being would do. I create a new burner account and threaten his family in the DM's. But this time he's gone too far. I would like to put my name to this. 

I didn't want to simply boil my take down to, "Brandon Walker's SEC bias is out of control", but I'm not sure what else to call it at this point. That's what it is. Brandon Walker's SEC bias is out of control. I can't sit idly by and let his pompous ass "It Just Means More" college football playoff takes go unchallenged. After listening to him last night on Unnecessary Roughness, and over the course of the last few weeks in general, they can essentially be summed up by the following two tweets.

I'm not going to sit here and argue that the SEC isn't the strongest conference top to bottom. They historically are. I believe they are this year as well. Credit to me for admitting that. And based on last night, if you look at the top 25 as a whole, the College Football Playoff Committee clearly believes that as well. In they end, they're going to give the SEC at minimum 4 spots in the college football playoffs.

That's 4x more than both the ACC and Big 12 will get in. They're essentially saying that the SEC is 4x the better conference. But apparently that is not NEARLY good enough for Brandon and the rest of the SEC. SEC fans won't rest until the ACC and Big 12 are wiped off the face of the earth. They think that teams outside the SEC (with the exception of Ohio State, Oregon, and maybe Penn State who they will so graciously & objectively concede are actually good football teams as well), wouldn't stand a chance against their gauntlet of teams in the southeastern United States.

Luckily for us, SEC teams did in fact play out of conference games this season. So we have some tangible evidence to point to. Let's see how SEC teams have faired out of conference this year. Maybe they're right. Maybe the SEC has just been steamrolling everybody in their path.

Good Wins:

Georgia 34, Clemson 3
Texas 31, Michigan 12
Tennessee 51, NC State 10
Alabama 42, Wisconsin 10

Oklahoma 34, Tulane 19

Ole Miss 40, Wake Forest 6

LSU 34, UCLA 17
Florida 24, UCF 13

"Good Wins":

Missouri 27, Boston College 21

Vanderbilt 34, Virginia Tech 27 (OT)

Oklahoma 16, Houston 12

Wins to Consider:

South Carolina 23, Old Dominion 19
Texas A&M 26, Bowling Green 20

Notable Losses:
Miami 41, Florida 17
Notre Dame 23, Texas A&M 13

USC 27, LSU 20
Oklahoma State 39, Arkansas 31 (OT)
California 21, Auburn 14
Georgia State 36, Vanderbilt 32

Mississippi State:
Arizona State 30, Mississippi State 23
Toledo 41, Mississippi State 17

Does the SEC look like the best conference in college football based on those scores? Absolutely they do. They objectively are. But do they look like a fucking juggernaut who is so head and shoulders above everyone else that it's a war crime to let the winner of the ACC or Big 12 in the playoffs over a 5th SEC team? Of course not. There's not nearly a big enough disparity between conferences to make it a total waste of time to allow in JUST ONE team from the ACC & Big 12. Or to give a 1 loss ACC or Big 12 team a slightly higher ranking than a 2 loss SEC school.

They seem to think it's completely laughable that anybody outside of a few teams in the B1G would even bother showing up for a game against Alabama… because of what? Jalen Milroe ran all over LSU last weekend? A team who lost by 7 on neutral field to USC, who is currently 16th in the B1G? I don't understand how you could have watched college football all season and think that an Indiana, or BYU, or Miami wouldn't even be able to move the ball against Alabama's defense. A defense who let up 40 points and was outplayed from start to finish by a Vanderbilt squad that lost to Georgia State.

I know doing the whole transitive property thing is bullshit. But watching Brandon and Kayce so smugly talk about these other lesser conferences as if SEC teams haven't on several occasions been complete dog shit as well. I don't where this confidence even comes from. It can't be from this season. Like Texas A&M didn't need a series of bail out calls and a few horrific coaching decisions to survive Bowling Green in Week 4. Like Notre Dame didn't straight up beat them in Week 1. It's insanity. They're (yes I'm lumping Kayce into this now) are so far gone with their assumption that the SEC is lightyears ahead of everyone else, that they aren't even interested in watching other teams compete. They can't see what's been right in front of their face all year long, which is that there's not a single SEC team who isn't fully capable to losing to any other team in the top 25.

Yes the SEC is the best conference. They're going to get at least 4 teams in. Maybe 5 if Indiana gets pounded by Ohio State. But all these impressive wins by SEC teams have come against themselves. Georgia's #1 strength of schedule is almost entirely based on SEC games. The strength of schedule disparity between the SEC and everyone else is all based on the assumption that the SEC by far and away has the best teams, even though there isn't really any evidence from this season to prove that. If teams played more out of conference games, and we had a bigger sample size that showed us how the 4 power conferences really stacked up against each other, then maybe they'd have more of a case. But we don't. So that's what the playoffs are for. The National Champion should be forced to go through teams from outside of their own conference. We can't turn the college football playoffs into the SEC Invitational, because we're "pretty sure", or because Vegas says they have the best teams. Even if that's true, they should still have to prove it on the field against opponents outside of their own conference.

The CFB Playoff format right now gives us the perfect representation of the best teams in college football. The best conferences (SEC & B1G) are going to get the most teams in by far. We'll get a 3 or 4 teams in there from elsewhere. The automatic byes to conference winners are perfectly fine. If the SEC is that dominant, then it shouldn't matter if Alabama plays BYU in the first or second round. It's all the same. And if an SEC team who Vegas says would be a 14-point favorite on a neutral field gets left out because they lost games to other high ranking SEC teams, then tough shit. Especially if Georgia loses 3 games to playoff teams in the regular season, why should they get to try again in the playoffs? They had their chance and they blew it. We've seen those games already. Now a different team gets a shot.

The fact that the SEC fans of the world aren't satisfied with having 4 teams in the college football playoffs because their ranking isn't high enough is so insufferably arrogant. The SEC gets SO MUCH respect from college football year in and year out. How is that not enough for them? I'm afraid won't be enough until we've banished the rest of country's teams entirely, and college football turns into 30-40 teams between a handful of super conferences who only play each other, and college football becomes exactly like the NFL. The scary thing is, college football sucks their dicks so hard that soon enough they'll probably bend the knee and let that happen. That would be a tragedy for college football.

The SEC is better than everyone else this year. But not that much better. The best possible thing that could happen to college football would be for a team like Miami or BYU to beat a top tier SEC team in the playoffs. Thank god we have rules in place that will give us a chance to see that happen. And despite what SEC fans seem to think, that possibility is VERY MUCH on the table.