B1G vs. SEC

[In the Deed the Glory]

Why are we looking at a set of head-to-heads exactly? You learn nothing

 

and this is the problem with your entire way of thinking...

[tschu]

My god. I really hope I don't have to re-explain the super-basic concept of why that is utterly meaningless.

 

But hey guys, ignorance is bliss. Keep glossing over my posts and responding with one-liners. I'm sure that'll win your argument.

[RedDenver]

My god. I really hope I don't have to re-explain the super-basic concept of why that is utterly meaningless.

 

But hey guys, ignorance is bliss. Keep glossing over my posts and responding with one-liners. I'm sure that'll win your argument.

Head-to-head is anything but meaningless. It's not the end-all be-all, but it does matter.

[tschu]

Of course, given the right context and given the knowledge that one head to head meeting does not mean that one team is better than another.

 

Certainly not in the context In the Deed was trying to use, not to mention that it wasn't even actual results - it was pure conjecture.

[Creed]

ESPN really pushing the Stoops to Florida angle. Anything to help their business partner and reduce the competitiveness of their business partner's competition.

[Mavric]

Alabama has beaten exactly one team currently rated in the Top 25.

 

Missouri is the SEC East champion but has not beaten a single current Top 25 team and lost to a team that is 0-for-the-B1G.

[Micheal]

Alabama has beaten exactly one team currently rated in the Top 25.

 

Missouri is the SEC East champion but has not beaten a single current Top 25 team and lost to a team that is 0-for-the-B1G.

#keepitonthedl

[VA Husker Fan]

Bad day for the SEC in OOC games. Georgia Tech tries to give away the game to Georgia but the Bulldogs don't take it. Clemson runs over South Carolina. Louisville barely gets by weaker Kentucky. SEC was only favored in one of the games I think, but failed to win any.

[Notre Dame Joe]

SEC 0-4 vs ACC!?

[Mavric]

SEC 0-4 vs ACC!?

Indeed.

[mrandyk]

Easily the worst of the power conferences, but conveniently the ACC was fielding their 4 best teams en route to a near-sweep of the SEC East.

[deedsker]

Every team from the SEC east lost an OOC game. Even the B1G West doesn't have that problem.

[Creed]

Of course the excuses you're hearing from SEC fans is only UGa was expected (high ranked) to win. You certainly don't hear that argument come bowl time as the SEC gets most of its bowl alignments against much lower ranked teams. It is usually 10-15 ranking difference for their bowl games.

[Mavric]

ESPN (writer) Goes Off the Bandwagon

 

It's been fun, SEC, really fun -- seven consecutive national championships, your own network, the undying enmity of the rest of the country. Really, it's been great. But as you limp into the SEC championship game on Saturday, with No. 1 Alabama playing -- ta-da! -- No. 17 Missouri, I think it's time to sit down and have a little talk.

We still like you. You still put on a great show every week. What the Iron Bowl lacked in, oh, I don't know, defense on Saturday night, it more than made up for in the pageantry and emotion that only a great college football rivalry can produce.

But let's be honest. You're not what you have been. You're not all that. You're not even all that good. And now that the season is concluding, and we can step back and gain the perspective that we lose in the Saturday-to-Saturday frenzy of the regular season, maybe we can figure out how the rest of us got hornswoggled into thinking you hadn't lost a step.

You don't understand? Let me lay it out for you.

For the first time in four seasons, the SEC won't have four 11-win teams. It very easily could have only one. Alabama is 11-1. Missouri and Mississippi State are 10-2.

The best running backs in the FBS play in the Big Ten. The best quarterbacks are in the Pac-12. So are the best defensive linemen. The ACC skunked you 4-0 this past Saturday. The Big 12 is the only conference with a chance of putting two teams in the playoff.

Speaking of which, the SEC is one Mizzou upset of the Crimson Tide away from sitting at home and watching the inaugural College Football Playoff go on without a member in it. It's not a question of underestimating the Tigers, which most of us have turned into an art form. But no team that lost at home to Indiana (4-8) and to Georgia by a score of 34-0 is going to play for the national championship.

[tschu]

They're the best conference. I can see how there is an illusion that they aren't this year though. The SEC was unfortunate that basically their 4 (and maybe as many as 6) best teams were all in the same division. Really, 4 of the top ~6 teams in the nation by pure power ranking all had to play each other, and when that happens, those teams will finish with 2, 3 losses. That gives the illusion that bahhhh da SEC is turrible herp derp when in fact it's just exactly what you'd expect. The opposite is also true of the East - Missouri sucks, Georgia is decent, probably better than Mizzou, but the point is that both of those teams would finish 6th at best in the SEC West.

 

But that article shows a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the variance of how teams fall into their arbitrary divisions, the way schedules work and how asymmetry will affect the record of teams, etc etc. "They only have 1 11-win team" ...well yeah, that's because they had 4 of the top 6 or 8 best teams in the nation who had to play a round robin. Of course everyone has 2 losses, that's exactly what the odds dictate.

 

By pure power ranking (and I mean puuuure power ranking alone) it's pretty messy, but the top 8 teams in some order (haven't bothered to order them, other than 1. Bama 2. Oregon and 8. Georgia) are Alabama, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Auburn, Oregon, Baylor, TCU, and Georgia. Sound crazy? It's not. That's literally the betting market power rankings top 8. And statistically there is no better predictor of game outcomes than the betting market. No system has been able to beat it.

 

Nothing he wrote actually makes any supported point about the SEC. It reads like propoganda. Stuff that SEC haters point at and fist-pump. Cool, get back to me when you're back on planet earth.