Blame Alabama and Georgia. Point fingers at Auburn, Florida, LSU, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, too.The Southeastern Conference, once the most dominant league in the land, lost its stranglehold on college football over the last three years. The organization that boasts a combined 19 national championships since 1990 hasn’t even made the title game since Georgia won it all in back-to-back years to close out the 2021-22 seasons.It’s a drought the league desperately would like to end this season. But the path back to the top could be harder with the addition of a ninth conference game. Sure, it provides teams with an extra chance to prove they belong in the 12-team College Football Playoff. It’s also another potential loss on postseason resumes.“It creates, without question, the most demanding sets of football schedules in all of college football,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said last month. “No one has created the kind of weekly competition that exists in the Southeastern Conference. It’s competition that our fans will experience every week because we believe we’re the best conference in college football.”
The last three CFPs would say otherwise, especially when recalling no-shows by Alabama last year (against Indiana) and Tennessee (against Ohio State) the year before. The Big Ten has won three straight national titles.The SEC is a combined 5-8 in the last three playoffs, with two of those victories coming against other league opponents.
