So far in this season’s installment of Bowl Mania, the SEC has done a great job at contradicting how dominant it claims to be.
The Southeastern Conference always manages to make a strong impression with its dominance in the world of college football. One of the league’s biggest feats from this season is 13 of its 14 members hitting eligibility for Bowl Mania.
However, how much good does teams making bowl games do for a conference when they’re all losing?
So far, the SEC is 0-4 in Bowl Mania, sporting what is currently the worst bowl record of any Power 5 conference by a wide margin. To make matters worse, only one of those losses was dealt by a Power 5 opponent (Texas Tech, 34-7 over MSST).
Seeing such a lack of formidability from a conference that rides on its strength is quite strange, but it most likely won’t get much better. Looking at the SEC’s eight remaining bowl games, all but one of them currently have point spreads higher than 10, meaning they are susceptible to going either way.
With that in mind, a fair assumption is that the SEC will suffer a few more losses between now and the end of Bowl Mania, leaving them with a rather flawed bowl record for the 2021-22 season.
The only thing that makes a less-than-desirable bowl record worse for the SEC, though, is the typical excuse from its fanbase: “If it isn’t a playoff bowl then we don’t care.”
Sure, the Southeastern Conference is no stranger to having a representative or two in the College Football Playoff bracket, but that doesn’t mean that every other team and its flaws should be ignored.
Obviously, if the SEC was 4-0 in Bowl Mania right now, some Southeastern fanatics would be bragging about just how superior their conference is. But today, it’s more about focusing strictly on the CFP.
If Mizzou had beaten Army, they would have had their first winning season since 2018. Florida was playing a cocky in-state opponent in UCF. Auburn was playing a ranked Houston, a team with now 12 wins on the season. Lastly, Mississippi State was facing Texas Tech, their coach’s former employer.
After reading through all of what was on the line in those four games, are people really supposed to believe that none of them mattered in any way whatsoever? Not only that, but how can someone use the “non-playoff bowls don’t matter to us” argument on teams that have never even made the playoff bracket to begin with?
The bottom line is that the Southeastern Conference has been and may continue laying eggs in Bowl Mania, regardless of whether or not fans think that the bowls in question “matter.” Perhaps the league isn’t as deep as it paints itself out to be.