The Big Ten has built plenty of momentum on the football field in recent years. After Indiana's dominant run to the National Championship last season, it was the third consecutive season the Big Ten captured the crown, joining Ohio State in 2024 and Michigan in 2023.
To make matters worse, the SEC hasn't even put a team into the national title game in the past three years. That's difficult to accept for fans, particularly in the aftermath of the league's dominant run before that. The SEC won 13 of the previous 17 national titles.
Many have argued that the influx of NIL money into the sport has shifted the hierarchy of power to the Big Ten. More simple-minded arguments are that the SEC was the only league paying players in the past, prior to legal pay-for-play.
Nick Saban isn't ready to concede conference supremacy to the Big Ten just yet. Speaking at SEC Media Days, Saban offered a fiery defense for the SEC with one point that is difficult to argue with:
“Everybody makes a big deal out of being able to beat us," Saban said. "That doesn’t mean they’re better than us, and that doesn’t mean that just because you win the championship that you have a better conference. It just means you had one better team. We had 5 teams in the playoffs last year; I think we’ll have that many teams in the playoffs again.”
Nick Saban is still siding with the SEC over the Big Ten
The Big Ten certainly has teams at the top that can compete with the best of the best in the SEC. That's been proven by title runs by Michigan, Ohio State, and Indiana in consecutive seasons. Teams like Oregon have also proven to be elite year-over-year.
But the real separator between the two leagues has always been the depth in the middle and at the bottom.
In the final SP+ rankings from 2025, the SEC and Big Ten both produced nine teams in the Top 25.
Where's the difference then?
The SEC's lowest-ranked team in the final SP+ rankings was Kentucky at No. 67. The Big Ten had seven teams ranked 70th or lower:
- Minnesota: 70th
- Rutgers: 72nd
- Maryland: 75th
- Michigan State: 83rd
- Wisconsin: 85th
- Purdue: 90th
- UCLA: 98th
So the SEC's worst team was better, at least in terms of SP+, than seven teams from the Big Ten.
That's Saban's point. That's the point that SEC fans and coaches have been making for a long time. There are simply no weeks off in the SEC. It's a grind every single week.
Until the teams at the bottom of the Big Ten can match the teams at the bottom of the SEC, or at least come close, their argument will always fall flat.
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