How Week 10 can kill all of the “SEC bracket” hype

The first College Football Playoff rankings have five SEC teams in the top 12, and that is more than enough to keep hype for an “SEC bracket” alive. But why?

The SEC is consistently the best conference in college football, and it is quite difficult to pretend that this current season says otherwise.

Following the release of 2022’s first College Football Playoff rankings, the league has an astounding five teams sitting in the top 12: #1 Tennessee, #3 Georgia, #6 Alabama, #10 LSU, and #11 Ole Miss.

Obviously, this has given a lot of ammunition to the media that have been discussing the chances of a CFP that consists predominantly—if not solely—of SEC teams. Such an argument was being made the minute after Tennessee downed Alabama, but the fraudulently high placement of the 2-loss LSU Tigers has only thrown fuel onto the fire.

However, it is quite possible that this year’s playoff bracket will not even end up seeing two Southeastern powers, much less three or four. This upcoming Week 10 slate can play a big role in the reason why.

Looking at where each of the aforementioned SEC teams stand today, all but one of them could be facing a season-altering matchup as they enter this upcoming Saturday. The point of this discussion is to highlight the ways in which most of the Southeastern contenders can stumble out of the CFP running, and that fact alone is a great start to doing so.

The only exception in this matter is Ole Miss, so we’ll go ahead and write them off right now: the Rebels were recently decimated by LSU and still have to host Alabama. Just like that, they are realistically done for as far as any playoff berths are concerned.

That already leaves just four SEC teams that have any sort of CFP path—and they all play each other this weekend.

On Saturday, two of the Southeastern Conference’s biggest games of the entire regular season will unfold as Tennessee visits Georgia and Alabama heads to LSU.

Just how impactful can/will these games be?

The battle between the Volunteers and Bulldogs is a rather simple one to break down, as the winner of that game will move up to 9-0 and be the team most likely to win the SEC East.

As for the Crimson Tide and Tigers fighting it out, either one of them is leaving with three losses or both of them are leaving with two; that is not a comfortable position to be in when both of you are trying to make a 4-team bracket.

If Alabama wins, it will remain in the driver’s seat of its division until further notice, and a 3-loss LSU will hopefully take the tumble it deserves. Again, the Tigers shouldn’t even be in playoff contention when considering their pair of ugly losses.

But, if they were to beat Bama, they would have both the Tide and Rebels in their win column. At that point, it would take a huge collapse on their part for them to not be crowned kings of the West.

All that leaves is the SEC title game, which will likely be between two of these four teams. If either an unbeaten or 1-loss East team wins, that will result in the West having no one with under two losses, effectively eradicating college football’s star division from making any headlines on Selection Day.

On the other hand, if either Alabama or LSU were to run the table and take the league title, one of them would make the bracket while the East’s champion watches from home.

Now I can already hear readers screaming that a 1-loss SEC team that didn’t win its conference could still make it in, and yes, it has been proven that such a thing is definitely possible.

However, a lot of things have to be considered before declaring that something like that is on the horizon. Along with imagining everything that I have said so far, you also have to bank on the failures of playoff hopefuls from the other Power 5 conferences.

Taking a peek at the CFP’s rankings, there are currently nine non-SEC teams that still have a realistic playoff path because of their records today. Said teams are: Ohio State, Clemson, Michigan, TCU, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Illinois, and North Carolina.

The farthest I’m going with my hypotheticals is having a few Southeastern teams lose a couple of games that they are very much capable of losing. Meanwhile, naysayers would be expecting several of the nine teams I just listed to uncharacteristically fall apart.

For example, let’s just say that Clemson, Ohio State, and TCU were to win out (an outcome that is quite plausible when seeing their remaining games). Upon doing so, they would all be rocking 13-0 records and conference crowns; a 1-loss Southeastern non-champ will never compete with that. And that goes without considering the arguments that even a 1-loss conference champ would have.

So to tie a bow on this whole thing, the chances of an SEC-littered playoff bracket are quite slim, regardless of what today’s rankings (and social media users) tell you. The cream has always risen to the top on these matters, and this time around will be no different—starting with Week 10.