SEC teams who were "wrongfully" left out of the CFP have a decision to make

We've seen many fans talk about how Indiana and SMU didn't belong in the College Football Playoff. It didn't stop with fans, either.

Noted college football voices like Kirk Herbstreit, Paul Finebaum, and others were quick to jump on the College Football Playoff committee. Herbstreit even went as far as to say that he "doesn't want to hear about wins" when it comes to determining the field of College Football Playoff.

Herbstreit, who incorrectly picked more than 50 games this season, said he believes that we should get "the best teams" in the field, regardless of record, insinuating that a team like Alabama or Ole Miss should've been selected ahead of Indiana or SMU because we think they would win if the two hypothetically played on a field.

It didn't even stop with analysts. The official SEC account showed its continued obsession for Clemson, posting a graphic of the Tigers, specifically, finishing 0-3 versus the SEC in 2024. Of course, Clemson played a tougher SEC schedule — with both Georgia and Texas — than most teams in the actual conference played, so there's that too.

However, as the SEC celebrated its decisive victory over Clemson as if it were the national championship — in a game where the Tigers were within striking distance in the fourth quarter, by the way — the conference and ESPN analysts like Herbstreit turned a blind eye to the team that was the biggest fraud in the College Football Playoff: A team from the SEC.

The Tennessee Volunteers finished with a 10-2 record and they were ranked ahead of both SMU and Indiana. They looked nothing like a playoff team in Ohio, though, suffering the worst margin of defeat of any team in the first-round. Ohio State jumped out to a 21-0 lead and never looked back. For reference, the Buckeyes were considered the third-best team in the Big Ten and Tennessee was considered the third-best team in the SEC.

Despite that decisive final — a game in which Kirk Herbstreit called and had a front-row seat — he never took any shots at the Volunteers. Instead, they somehow got a pass. They got a pass through almost all of the traditional ESPN passages.

It's easy to live in hypotheticals, but the truth is that blowouts in the College Football Playoff have been a thing since its inception. Anyone remember Georgia blowing out TCU a couple of years ago? Anyone remember Clemson wiping the floor with Alabama in 2018? Those were national championship games. So, of course, we can expect that we're going to see blowouts in the first-round — and likely following rounds — of the CFP, especially when you play the first-round games in home stadiums. It's just common sense.

Despite what Lane Kiffin, Herbstreit, Finebaum, or others might tell you, the committee got the field right. It's the system that's a failure and we need it to be revamped. But, for anyone who believes that this should involve taking Power-4 teams with better records out of the field in favor of more SEC teams that lost three or four games, you've missed the point, and Tennessee proved it.

Indiana only lost by 10 points to Notre Dame. Clemson lost to Texas by 14 points. If Tennessee had hung around and lost by only a couple of scores to Ohio State, what would the narrative be? Would we be hearing analysts say they don't belong? No, we'd be hearing how competitive of a game it was and how "it was really just a couple of plays away from going the other way."

So, all the SEC teams that feel they were wrongfully left out of the playoff really have one simple decision to make: Do you want to stay in the SEC?

If you believe you could dominate the other leagues, then why don't you file your exit papers and go join one of them? Sure, the money is good, but is it worth the complaint every season?

Since they clearly can't win enough games to get to the playoff, perhaps the SEC isn't well suited for them after all.

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