DALLAS — How many SEC teams can make the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff this fall?
Three? Four? Five?
The SEC dominated the four-team field, winning six of the 10 championships, so naturally, the new format has spawned one of the topics du jour at SEC Media Days this week.
Every July, the league’s coaches and players alike take to the podium and talk about the ultimate goal of winning a title. Previously, the talk was mostly gibberish for the majority of schools. Yet suddenly, the yearly pablum is no longer nonsense.
While the pressure remains the same, more teams now have an opportunity to actually chase a championship — and no conference will benefit more from the expanded playoff than the SEC.
It’s long been the deepest (apologies to Big 12 commissioner Brett Yorkmark) and most competitive league in college football, but now over half the league (I count nine realistic teams in 2024) can say with a straight face, “Why not us?”
“Oklahoma won six, seven conference championships in a row. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t been to one. My goal is to win a championship,” Oklahoma star safety Billy Bowman Jr. said Tuesday.
“We went to the college football playoffs four times. I haven’t been there, so that’s something I want to check off, too.”
Barring a weird trip through the Metaverse, The Sooners aren’t winning the national title. But make the 12-team College Football Playoff?
It’s certainly plausible.
In two days, eight teams have taken center stage in Dallas — and six programs all have 2024 CFP expectations.
Georgia. Ole Miss. LSU.
. Missouri. Oklahoma.
Toss in Alabama, Texas and Texas A&M, and there’s your nine of 16 SEC schools eying a run this December.
With so many programs hopeful for a run to a title, more and more games will carry national implications and stakes.
“We want to keep the standard the standard,” said Georgia standout safety Malaki Starks who was a key member of the 2022 title team but also on the 2023 team that went 12-1 and just missed the four-team field.
“We don’t talk about games. (We want) to go win them. I think that’s the biggest thing for us, and we just want to be able to do what we know we can do and just keep doing it at the highest level.”
How many SEC teams can crack the Tier 1 status in 2024?
It’s easy to forget because of the SEC’s recent dominance, but only three SEC teams have ever made the dance (Alabama, Georgia and LSU).
That’s the same number as the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC.
If the expanded playoff existed in 2023, Ole Miss and Missouri would’ve been added to that ledger. Last year’s playoff would’ve included four SEC teams, plus the newcomer Texas Longhorns.
So again, I ask, how many teams can make the 12-team playoff this fall?
In terms of preseason odds, the SEC has three of the top 5 national title favorites in Georgia, Texas and Alabama.
Considering all three programs have previously made the playoff, they stand in a Tier 1 status entering the 2024 season. They might not all make the playoff, but those are the expectations, and anything short of a run to the tournament would be a disappointment.
But for the first time ever, programs like Ole Miss and Mizzou enter the year with legit hopes of making a run toward a championship. Tennessee and LSU have playoff standards, too, while Oklahoma and Texas A&M are darkhorse sleepers who could make a run if the cards break just right.
The problem?
Even in an expanded field, there’s only so many spots.
The SEC benefits — but only so much. With five bids allotted to the highest-ranked conference champs, the SEC will battle Notre Dame and the Big Ten (and maybe the runner-up in the ACC) for the remaining seeds.
That’s why it was interesting to hear how head coaches Lane Kiffin and Elijah Drinkwitz navigated the real pressure of heightened expectations this fall. Neither could shy away from them because it’s clear their programs are all-in on the 2024 season, but both acknowledged there’s a balance between meeting the moment and getting too ahead of your skis.
“Every team is going to have to run their race,” Drinkwitz said.
“I understand that there’s a lot of outside expectations on what our football program should be. … With no divisions, a 12-team playoff, you can get caught up in a lot of what-ifs and play in a lot of hypotheticals. The only thing that I know for sure is that we’re going to play Murray State in Week 1, and we have to focus with everything we have on being 1 and 0 and consistently preparing the way we know it takes to be 1 and 0. And at the end of the year we’ll look back over our 12 games and we’ll see how many of those wins and what that earns us.”
Kiffin is on record that this is the deepest and most talented team he’s ever had, but he’s cautioned anyone just penciling in Ole Miss as a title contender because there’s been so many moving parts within his program.
“This is a rat poison situation,” he said in an homage to his mentor Nick Saban.
“There is plenty of noise out there that means nothing, and plenty of teams over the years in all sports have been ranked high and haven’t played well and been ranked low and played really well. None of that means anything. … We got to perform really well, practice really well, and coach really well. But we’re going to look better coming off the bus, I guess.”
In the end, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel might’ve best detailed the challenge so many SEC programs face this fall in a new reality where chasing a championship is suddenly plausible for more teams — but the margins are so small because the league could cannibalize itself on any given Saturday in the quest to make the College Football Playoff.
“Sometimes feet are easier to gain than inches are,” said Heupel, who inherited a broken program in 2021 and went 11-2 in Year 2.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And I think we’re third in the league in wins over the last couple of seasons, but there’s more meat on the bone for us to go take.”
In the SEC, everyone wants to eat greedy, but there’s only so many spots at the table.
Local Dallas, TX
Most Popular
Comments / 0