Wild scenario leaving the SEC completely out of the College Football Playoff goes viral

A wild scenario is growing legs on social media that would leave the SEC completely out of the College Football Playoff. Yes, entirely.

The SEC has consistently been the premiere conference in all of college football. The conference — for better or for worse — has some of the top brands in the country, and typically, the top of SEC is as good as anyone.

While many detractors might say that the SEC gets a certain amount of inflated bias from media members — particularly ESPN — no one can argue with the national championships won by programs like Alabama, LSU, and Georgia in the last decade.

As we look ahead to the first 12-team College Football Playoff, most SEC fans are already discussing just how many teams the conference will get into the field. It seems like a foregone conclusion that the SEC will get at least three bids, and it seems more likely that the conference will see four, or possibly even five bids, when it's all said and done.

But, what about this wild scenario that is going viral on social media?

RedditCFB pointed out a scenario — and it's one that's at least not totally impossible — where the SEC wouldn't have one of the five highest-ranked conference championships and, therefore, wouldn't get an automatic qualifier.

The idea? LSU wins the conference championship with a 10-3 record. The Tigers still have an outside shot at winning the SEC. As a matter of fact, this idea is not as far-fetched as one might think. LSU just needs to win out, and have the Vegas favorites win their matchup in conference games the next three weeks.

iIt's possible that the SEC could carnivorize itself, as well, and we see a bunch of three-loss teams all finishing up the 2024 season in the conference.

As RedditCFB points out above, there is a scenario where eight teams in the SEC finish out the year with three losses and, if that were to be the case and LSU was to be the champion, it would be interesting to see what the College Football Playoff committee would do.

But, realistically, it wouldn't fall the way that this scenario is laid out.

Most likely, the win in the SEC Championship game would propel LSU over an undefeated Army team and give the Tigers the automatic qualifier, though it remains to be seen if that would be good enough for them to earn a first-round bye. We'd say it likely would.

In addition, even if things were to play out this way, there's just no way that the SEC isn't still getting at least one at-large bid, most likely multiple. Even with a bunch of two-loss and one-loss teams ahead of them, the committee is simply not going to exclude the SEC from the field. It's just not happening.

It's a wild scenario to think about and in the world of college football, anything is possible.

But, let's be real, you'd have a meltdown of epic proportions if the SEC were to be left out, even if they are a bunch of 9-3 teams. At that point, would they be deserving? You could make the argument that the answer would be no, but that wouldn't matter to the committee, regardless of what anyone might say.

It's fun to dream about chaos — and we're absolutely in for some carnage down the stretch of the season — but the SEC being excluded from the playoff isn't going to happen in any way, shape, or form.

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