“Is the SEC Championship Game Loser an Auto-Fade in Bowl Season?”

That’s a question Matt Melton poses here.  The answer is, it’s complicated.

The SEC Championship Game has been around since 1992, but I limited my analysis to the BCS and College Football Playoff eras (since 1998). We’ll start with the BCS era (1998-2013). Here is how those sixteen SEC Championship Game losers fared in their bowl games.

No matter which way you parse the results (either straight up or against the spread), they don’t appear to be a great deal different from flipping a coin. However, there is one thing this generic analysis leaves out. The reason SEC Championship Game losers have a reputation for under-performing in their bowl game is because they are disappointed to not be playing for a national championship. Having to play in the Capital One Bowl instead of the BCS Championship Game is a recipe for a flat performance, or so the theory goes. What if we only looked at SEC Championship Game losers that had legitimate national title aspirations going into the SEC Championship Game? By my count, there were only five such teams in the BCS era: Tennessee in 2001, Alabama in 2008, Florida in 2009, Georgia in 2012, and Missouri in 2013. Outside of Alabama, those teams did surprisingly well in their bowl games.

SEC Championship Game losers don’t appear to have performed more poorly than expected in the BCS era. Maybe things have changed in the Playoff era. With four teams now able to compete for a national title in bowl season, perhaps the SEC Championship Game loser is more despondent and not motivated for their bowl game. In the Playoff era, here is how the seven SEC Championship Game losers have fared in their bowl games.

As in the BCS era, the overall results don’t appear to be much different than what we might find if we flipped a coin to determine the outcomes. Again though, not all SEC Championship Game losers are created equal. What if we limit our analysis to those teams with legitimate national championship aspirations entering the SEC Championship Game. There have been four such teams in the Playoff era: Auburn in 2017, Georgia in 2018, Georgia in 2019, and Florida in 2020. Their bowl performance has been mixed at best.

In the Playoff era, SEC Championship Game losers with national title aspirations have not fared well. However, four games is not nearly a large enough sample to offer any definitive proclamations. Instead of auto-fading the SEC Championship Game loser, you would be much better served reading the tea leaves before their bowl game. Florida had a host of opt-outs prior to the Cotton Bowl and the betting line in the game reflected that. At full strength on a neutral field, Florida would have likely been a slight favorite against Oklahoma. As the spread was more than a touchdown in the other direction, its obvious something a little stronger than motivation was influencing the number.

I think what his data shows is that the effect of the opt-out in these games has increased as the playoff field has expanded.  That may be because of the perfect storm resulting from Alabama’s dominance and a four-team CFP field.  Would further expansion change those dynamics?  Quite possibly.