How big did ESPN crash with its unfettered bias in promoting the SEC for postseason play?
Well, it’s hovering around a face plant.
The network’s favorite horses for college football’s greatest prize have mostly faltered.
Only one SEC team is left in the playoffs.
And what this all means is the SEC has been caught by the rest of college football. It is no longer, in a competitive sense, light years or even a bright blinking stop light, ahead of the rest of the Power Four conferences.
If the ACC’s Miami beats the SEC’s Mississippi Thursday night, ESPN and the CFP committee greasing of the SEC pathway was felonious piracy of playoff money.
When the SEC loses one of its biggest foghorns in Paul Finebaum, you know that storied, propped-up league is in the doldrums and exposed in the era of NIL, where everybody else can pay their players.
Finebaum, a longtime Alabama radio host and national TV personality, went on ESPN’s “First Take” on Tuesday and admitted, even he, voted by Awful Announcing.com as the most biased personality in college football, could not defend the SEC this season and its limitless hypothetical victories.
The CFP committee gave the SEC five of the 12 playoff berths. The SEC is 2-7 in bowl games this postseason.
No. 9 Alabama, gifted a berth after almost losing to two-win (SEC) Auburn got annihilated by No. 1 seed Indiana. No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 7 Texas A&M, No. 3 Georgia have all been eliminated. Only No. 6 Mississippi remains and plays No. 10 Miami Thursday night.
“There’s no way to defend the SEC,” Finebaum told “First Take” with Stephen A Smith. “It’s been terrible.”
“I kept wrapping my arms around Alabama and saying, ‘Stephen A. remember what they did, they went through that gauntlet in the middle of the year,” said Finebaum.
“Well, a lot of those teams they beat really weren’t very good after all. They lost in bowl games, and they looked terrible. So it’s a rough year for the SEC. Ole Miss is it, regardless of the Lane Kiffin story, which I know we’re going to talk about. But if Ole Miss loses Thursday night and I’m sitting around having to defend this league to you, Stephen A. saying ‘No big deal that it’s three years without an SEC team in the national championship game’ there’s no defense. It’s been rough,” Finebaum admitted.
Writing for ESPN, longtime college football pundit Dan Wetzel put it this way:
“It’s not that the SEC isn’t still “good” or even capable of winning a national championship — Ole Miss might very well do it. Top to bottom, it might still be the best league, with the majority of schools all-in on football.
“That said, the days of complete domination, all-SEC national title games or deep, juggernaut teams are clearly gone, perhaps forever. This isn’t the same.”
What’s happened is both good and bad.
Good because college football television viewership is skyrocketing. It’s never been so popular to follow, watch and get involved in what’s going on between the sidelines.
It’s bad because of all the chaos, movement, gaudy money numbers and purchase of talent.
For the SEC, revenue sharing, NIL and the transfer portal has spread around talent to other programs and hurt the depth of their own teams.
Alabama used to be the king of talent. So was Georgia.
Now we’re seeing those storied programs get pushed around, ran past and chased down and tackled.
Illinois coach Bret Bielema told ESPN this week, “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in coaching because you know you’re on a more equal playing field. The introduction of the portal, NIL, and revenue sharing is the most game-changing development in my 32 years of coaching.
“It’s hard when you would do what you have to do as long as you possibly could and in the end, sometimes it just didn’t matter,” Bielema explained about recruiting back when he was at Arkansas and Wisconsin.
“Now you just come to work every day knowing that blue blood, red blood, orange blood, whatever, everybody’s got a chance, man.”
Before Texas Tech’s tires blew out against Oregon, we saw the Red Raiders purchase themselves a Big 12 championship and berth in the CFP.
We’ve seen Indiana, check that, Indiana, become the nation’s darling and No. 1 team in the country and favorite to win it all.
Ohio State is home. Oklahoma is home. Texas is watching from home with Georgia and Alabama and Penn State.
The door is open.
Yes, it’s all kind of a mess.
But recent chaos has become the game’s equalizer.
It has also exposed the raw brand worship and advancement of SEC teams by the media, especially ESPN, the owner of CFP television rights for all the games.
ESPN’s interest? Is it really determining a fair field? Or advancing its ratings by picking brands for increased revenue?
The fact the SEC gets an unfair advantage in preseason polls, then rides that with questionable scheduling and far too much credit for intra-conference wins, has been exposed.
It is a mess that’s taken the SEC off its high saddle ride and made the rest of the cowboys eligible to enjoy the roundup rodeo.
