Doubts about the SEC being college football's top conference need to be refuted. Alabama Football and the SEC's other teams take the first step in college football's Week 1.
Writing for The Ringer, Jordan Ritter Conn titled a story "The SEC's Era of College Football Invincibility Is Over." Conn writes from the perspective of being a Southerner and states that the South has a problem. The problem is that the SEC "is merely very, very, very good." As every Alabama Crimson Tide fan fully understands, being very, very, very good is what Conn says it is, "unacceptable."
Conn knows how to turn a phrase, as can be seen in the snippets below.
- "For nearly a quarter century, the Southeastern Conference has been the most dominant force in college football, functioning as a multipronged behemoth, swallowing whole any foe from another region of the country who dared to believe it could compete."
- "The evidence of slippage is scant, but powerful. You see, for two whole years in a row, a school from outside the SEC has won the College Football Playoff national title... There’s a sense of unease in the air. Maybe it’s a general discomfort with the rapid pace of the sport’s change. Or maybe it’s a fear that the past two seasons were not, in fact, a blip."
Alabama football fans can forgive Conn for being a Georgia fan. Other than that failing, he is spot on. The SEC, in the form of at least a majority of its teams, needs to put the hammer down. And an SEC team needs to win it all this season.
A question is how much can SEC fans root for other SEC teams, especially hated rivals? An example is that, though I want an SEC return to unquestioned dominance, I'll be pulling for the Baylor Bears on Friday night. My entrenched animus leads me to hope the SEC goes 13-3 in Week 1, with losses by Auburn, Tennessee, and LSU.
A more reasonable response would be favoring SEC football teams to win every Week 1 game.
SEC Football Win Probabilities for Week 1
Note: Win probabilities provided by ESPN Analytics
- Thursday night - Central Arkansas at Missouri - 98% probability of a Missouri win
- Friday night - Auburn at Baylor - 48.2% for an Auburn win
Saturday SEC Games
- Texas at Ohio State - 53.3% Longhorns' win
- Syracuse vs. Tennessee (in Atlanta) - 88.6% Vols' win
- Mississippi State at Southern Miss - 79.8% Bulldogs' win
- Toledo at Kentucky - 81.9% Wildcats' win
- Marshall at Georgia - 97.3% UGA win
- Alabama Crimson Tide at Florida State - 90.6% Bama win
- Alabama A&M at Arkansas - 99% Hogs' win
- Illinois State at Oklahoma - 98.4% Sooners' win
- Long Island at Florida - 99% Gators' win
- UTSA at Texas A&M - 91.8% Aggies' win
- Charleston Southern at Vanderbilt - 98.9% Vandy win
- LSU at Clemson - 46.2% LSU win
- Georgia State at Ole Miss - 94.4% Rebels' win
- Virginia Tech vs. South Carolina (in Atlanta) - 70.9% Gamecocks' win