If you’re one of those folks who thinks rooting for SEC rival programs is a virtue because overall, a stronger conference aids in Georgia’s quest to make the CFP field, Dan Wolken throws cold water on your logic.
These arguments about conference supremacy, however, feel more like a relic of the BCS era in college football and not particularly relevant to what happens with the College Football Playoff. In fact, at this point, it may be better for the SEC’s playoff aspirations if it had just two good teams and 12 others who couldn’t run a basic dive play without tripping over the line of scrimmage.
Until proven otherwise, the CFP selection committee places a high value on two things, in exactly this order: 1) Power conference teams having zero or one loss, and 2) Winning a conference championship. Which means the worst thing for any league, including the SEC, would be having a bunch of top-10 caliber teams that are more likely to beat up on each other rather than have one emerge unscathed.
Like it or not, he’s got a point. To date, no two-loss team has cracked the semis. And if conference weakness mattered all that much, would we easily assume, as we all do, that Clemson’s all but a lock to go again this season?
So if you were feeling guilty about rooting for Tennessee and South Carolina to go down last weekend, maybe let it go. Watching programs like those go down in upsets is almost as much fun as watching the Dawgs win. Why deprive yourself?