FanPost

Big 12 Football vs SEC Mystique

If you are like me, you are tired of hearing about the vast superiority of the SEC. I could handle it if it was just homerism by the fanbase, but it’s not. There is a very apparent bias toward the SEC among commentators, the playoff committee, etc, all giving the SEC a free pass as being far and away the most dominant conference. On the heels of the top SEC powers both getting their respective asses handed to them, one would hope that this would point to a crack in the veneer. I doubt it, but again, one can always hope.

In the era of the CFP, perception matters and the deferential treatment of the SEC gives them an absolute advantage come playoff picking time. It is the only conference to get two teams into the CFP thus far (2017) and almost did it in back-to-back years. Yes, the CFP is meant to have the top 4 teams in the country in the playoff. Not arguing that. However, the majority of games any team will play is within its own conference. So, if one conference is given a free pass as the assumed ‘most dominant conference’ then it can get by largely on reputation alone without really having to prove itself especially if said conference is top-heavy (like the SEC is). As I will discuss below, a conference’s ‘strength’ can be masked pretty easily and it’s something the SEC has figured out how to do (more on that below).

Bottom line, the SEC is a brilliant marketing machine built around one team: Alabama. And yes, it has been the best program in college football over the past decade (though clearly not this year). The SEC has used Alabama’s dominance to convince everyone they are the best conference top to bottom based on the sustained success of that one program. And while no one can argue with the dominance of Alabama over the last decade (minus Clemson), the SEC has little else to show for itself to justify such lofty praise and preferential treatment in the polls and rankings year-in, year-out. What is most annoying about this deferential treatment given to the SEC is that it actually ignores the results on the field. I’m not a statistician nor am I professional gambler. However, I do find numbers, spreads and lines to be interesting as an indicator and test of perception versus reality.

So, since we’re entering the offseason and it is a painful wait until the 2019 season kicks off, I wanted to contribute an admittedly rudimentary thought piece to this board for discussion to help kill some time. It is meant to be thought provoking, so take it as such. The following provides some arguments for how the SEC has strategically manipulated the college football landscape to put itself in the best position come CFP time. I also dig into the results on the field to show that the SEC, while strong, is not stronger than any other conference (minus the PAC 12).

Padding the non-conference schedules: In the era of the CFP, a loss no longer means you are out of contention (which I think is a good thing). The quality of the loss matters. The committee is charged with getting the 4 best teams in the playoff (something else I do not have a problem with on face). Strength of schedule does matter and one particular outgrowth of the CFP that I have personally enjoyed is the scheduling of better non-conference games early in the season. This is where the SEC strategy begins. The SEC is the leader in padding their schedules with easy games to hype up their records and respective rankings to help bolster their claims as being the toughest conference. FACT: The SEC schedules the lowest percentage of non-conference games against Power 5 opponents of any P5 conference at only 23%. FACT: The SEC is the only P5 conference with every team scheduling a minimum of one or more FCS teams each year as a part of that non-conference slate (looking at you Aggies as one of the worst offenders of the 2 FCS opponents per year allowance). FACT: The SEC schedules one of their cupcake opponents late in the season providing not only an easy win, but a chance to rest their starters and to get a nice rankings bump across the conference during a time when other conferences are playing conference games and beating each other. I have got to hand it to the SEC for being strategic about this. When you factor in that they are also one of only two P5 conferences that only play 8 conference games, the mighty SEC has essentially replaced a conference game with an FCS opponent thus guaranteeing 8+ more total conference wins each year and 16+ more wins from that move alone. This gets them better records across the conference which leads to better rankings as well as more bowl qualified teams come the end of the year.

The SEC excuse for this, of course, is that since they have the toughest conference and thus the toughest schedule that their SOS is already grueling so it all evens out in the end. But this is an inherently self-fulfilling prophecy full of circular logic when the rankings are based largely on, well, SOS which is based largely on rankings of opponents which is based on records which is based on strength of opponents which is based on SOS. But, should that not balance out? The CFP rankings take into account SOS after all. But the AP and Coaches polls are driven more by perception of SOS, particularly at the outset. So if the SEC is perceived to be the strongest conference then the rankings get a bump based on that perception. So, when most of your opponents are ranked in the top 25 when the conference slate starts because the non-conference schedule is intentionally easy and they all go 3-1 or 4-0, then each conference victory looks that much more impressive. Aggie is a great example of this. How many times have they started the season 3-1 or 4-0 only to end 8-5? Now, before the Aggie fans lose their minds over the fact that they played Clemson this year and next year, let’s not nit-pick the outlier. Their prior P5 opponents in the CFP era have been UCLA and Arizona State who are middling teams that both hail from the weakest P5 conference. That’s it. The rest of the non-conference schedule is full of Nichols State, UL-Monroe, and Lamar. Anyway, back to the main argument.

Now, I’m not claiming the SEC West schedule is easy. I do believe it is probably the toughest single division in college football (which, again, has zero to do with Aggie) with Alabama, Auburn and LSU vying for power, but it is not that much tougher than other divisions or the Big 12 set-up. The Big 10 East with Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State arguably has an equal top 3 to the SEC West. The Big 12 plays a round robin, so every year the winner will have faced the other best team twice and has to beat the other best team twice to go undefeated. Point being, this idea that the SEC West or SEC East schedules are so much tougher than what other P5 teams face that they should get to play one less conference game and schedule cupcakes in nonconference but still be considered equal to other conferences in SOS is ridiculous. Granted, LSU’s 2018 schedule of playing Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Auburn in conference is a pretty ridiculous schedule. But it is a fluke that they drew Georgia and Florida in the same year and that will only happen once every so often.

But while I’m at it, I’ll take one more poke at Aggie. I’m stating that if Aggie scheduled tougher teams, they’d rarely win 8-9 games. Aggie did schedule Clemson, so good on them for willingly taking the losses, but prior to that they played UCLA and Arizona State, two middling teams from the weakest P5 conference and prior to that, they did not schedule a non-conference game against a P5 program with SMU being their toughest non-conference opponent. And they maintain their loyalty to playing the likes of Prairie View, Nichols State and LA-Lafayette year-in, year-out. But this is not entirely their fault. The who’s who of CFB don’t really see scheduling the Aggies as a signature victory, so I probably shouldn’t be so hard on them…

Now, in fairness, not all the SEC teams are like Aggie. Bama, LSU and Auburn in particular tend to schedule at least one marquee matchup with a known P5 program each year. But they still schedule the rest to be cupcakes as well. And this again is part of what I think their strategy is. If you have to step out of conference, only have your best 3-4 teams do that consistently to up the conference reputation. Also, on another interesting note, the SEC teams rarely travel out of the South even in these bigger matchups and they typically refuse to play true road games. Alabama has done only neutral site openers since 2012 and only goes as far as Atlanta or Dallas when they do. They typically do not do home and homes, so when they do play on the road it is a road game for both teams but almost always geographically closer to their own fanbase. In fairness, I think this probably has more to do with money than anything else, but it is an interesting point to consider that they stick to the same time zone.

Regardless, every P5 conference has their own policy on scheduling non-conference opponents. Most other P5 teams play at least 10 P5 teams (9 conference games plus 1 mandated P5 nonconference minimum) with some (including Texas) typically playing 11 power 5 teams. The SEC plays 9 P5 teams per year with some choosing to play 10. Typically 2 and in some cases 3 fewer P5 opponents each year than most other P5 teams. Of note, 2018 was a particularly weak non-conference year for the SEC. Alabama played Louisville (sans Lamar Jackson) and Georgia played Georgia Tech. I will not knock LSU playing a down Miami or Florida playing a down Florida State because it is not either teams’ fault that those traditionally strong programs were having below average years. What we can blame all of them for are the games against Citadel, Idaho, Northern Colorado, Charleston Southern, etc.

I’m not going to go into all of the P5 conferences, but let’s talk about the Big 12 since this is a Texas site. Since the Big 12 plays a round robin, it must have 9 conference games, leaving only 3 nonconference slots available since the NCAA does not allow more than 12 regular season games to be scheduled. While the Big 12 does not expressly prohibit the scheduling of FCS teams, only about half of the teams schedule an FCS team on average. And the Big 12 does a great job of packing the nonconference schedule in general. In fact, the Big 12 schedules the highest percentage of non-conference games against P5 schools than any other P5 conference (37%) even though it is not required to do so. And when they do schedule FCS opponents, it is typically at least a top-10 FCS team like North Dakota State or South Dakota State (but FCS is still FCS, so not trying to pump that up at all, to be clear). And Big 12 teams also do not stay local. They agree to true home and homes and are willing to travel to different time zones and have true road games at the Coliseum, the Horseshoe and other tough road destinations. So, the point here is that the SEC pads their non-conference schedules. The data leaves little room to argue that point. Moving on.

Top heavy coattails: Let’s state the obvious again for the record. Alabama is far and away the most consistently dominant team in college football over the last decade (although Clemson is certainly closing that gap). Yes, Alabama is in the SEC. But that alone is no more a reason to anoint the SEC as the most superior conference than stating the same about the ACC because of Clemson’s recent dominance of their league (or their fleecing of Alabama). Alabama would undoubtedly be the top team in any other P5 conference (or 2nd best team in the ACC). We can probably safely say the same thing about Clemson at this point. But that’s it. The SEC is and has been riding the coat tails of Alabama. Georgia, LSU, Florida and Auburn are all great programs and each has been relevant in the past decade but they fluctuate from year to year with all of those programs having some down years in recent history. However, the point is that any of those teams would be considered an upper tier team in the other P5 conferences. Everyone else in the SEC would be middle of the pack in any other P5 conference. But you can make that exact same argument about almost any P5 conferences top 2-3 teams. Does the SEC have more, maybe, but the difference is not great enough to justify the love the SEC gets, nor create the type of separation they are granted above other P5 schools and in consideration for the CFP. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s go to the tape…

Bowl Season: Since it really always comes down to the field, let’s go to the games. Bowl Season is the one time of year the SEC cannot hide from decent competition outside the confines of their own conference and cannot choose the safe confines of their own backyard or time zone. Given how dominant the SEC is, that must translate to bowl season, right? In the 2018 bowl season, the SEC west 6-6. That is roughly the same as every other P5 conference. The Big 12 went 4-3, the ACC 6-5, the PAC 12 went 3-4 and the Big 10 went 5-4. The SEC has the fourth best win percentage of five conferences (Big 12 was tops, by the way). Had Arizona State beat Fresno, the SEC would have had the worst win percentage, but let’s not go THAT far down the hypothetical pathway…

Again, since I’m a Texas fan, let’s dig into the SEC vs the Big 12. The Big 12 and SEC were matched up in four bowl games. The SEC was favored in all four (Alabama and Georgia by double-digit points, Missouri by 9.5 and Vandy by 4.5). When the dust settled, the Big 12 went 4-0 against the spread and 3-1 in outright wins against the SEC in bowl season with the SEC’s lone victory coming from, you guessed it, Alabama. Think about that. The Big 12 was an underdog in every game and won 3 out of 4. On an interesting side note, the under won 3 out of 4 with only the Baylor/Vandy game achieving the over. Baylor almost hit the line by itself (line was 57 and Baylor scored 48) against an SEC defense. Two of the games were 1.5 points below the line (OSU/Mizzou and OU/Bama). The Texas game was 11 points below the line. Here is what is interesting about that. Given the spreads, we can conclude that every Big 12 offense outperformed the expectation and every SEC defense underperformed their expectation (including Bama) and pretty significantly.

There is even more data to go on as well for the Big 12 vs SEC. If you add in the regular season meetings (Tech vs Ole Miss, WVU vs Tenn and KSU vs Miss St), the Big 12 went 4-3 against the SEC in 2018. There are any number of ways to break this down, but most will take more time than I have to spend on this. So, I’m going to just look at it from the high level of Big 12 Offense vs SEC Defense and vice versa for total yards and points scored. Yeah, this is cherry picking the data, but I am choosing the primary statistics used for total offensive and defensive rankings. I would love to do these numbers based solely on conference game averages to remove the outliers of the non-conference, but again, that takes more time than I have to spend on this. And since the majority of each team’s respective schedule is against their own conference, the averages will be generally reflective of the conference performance for the comparison here. Moreover, since the SEC schedules the easiest non-conference schedules of any P5 conference, we can also safely make the assumption that their offensive and defensive ranks are padded by beating up on cupcakes. So if anything, the result of my little experiment is still probably too generous to the SEC. But I digress.

2018 Big 12 Offense vs SEC Defense: Since the SEC is where defense rules and the Big 12 ‘plays no defense’, one would expect the Big 12 to get a wake-up call when playing ‘real’ defenses. But the actual games proved otherwise. On average, SEC defenses surrendered 100 more yards and 9 more points on average. In 5 out of the 7 games, the Big 12 offense beat the average PPG surrendered of the SEC defense they played. In 6 out of 7 games, the Big 12 offense beat the average YPG of the SEC defense they played. The only game where a Big 12 team failed to put up more yards was KSU (who had an abysmal year on offense ranking 114th) against Mississippi State which had the top ranked defense in the SEC. (On a side note, Mississippi States’ defensive season stats are freakin’ amazing. Go look at the numbers and try not to be impressed. Not sure how they did not get more buzz this year, but man, it’s pretty sick.)

But, perhaps this was to be expected, right? So, what about how Big 12 offenses performed against their own season average? Certainly, they must have performed well below their season averages against the SEC defenses, right? Not so. The Big 12 offenses averaged only 6 fewer YPG in the games against SEC teams than they did against the season averages (again weighted heavily against Big 12 defenses). How about PPG? Well, the SEC did prove to be better there than the average, but the Big 12 offenses only averaged 4 fewer PPG in games against the SEC than they did against their overall averages.

Summary: The winner here is Big 12 Offense over SEC Defense and it’s pretty stark. The Big 12 offenses maintained their conference level output while the SEC defenses took it on the nose against Big 12 offenses compared to their conference output.

2018 SEC Offense vs Big 12 Defense: Since the Big 12 plays no defense and the SEC has all of the athletes, then this should break in the SEC’s favor too. Yet the numbers again tell a different story. The SEC offenses put up only 44 more yards against their Big 12 defenses than their respective averages, but the SEC offenses actually scored 1 point below their average against Big 12 defenses. In 4 of the 7 games, the SEC team was actually held below their own season average in points scored and yards gained. Of note, the two best SEC teams did not fare better. Alabama hit their average YPG exactly but was held below their points average against OU (one of the worst defenses in college football statistically). Georgia was held to well below their season averages in both YPG and PPG. Can someone remind me which of the Georgia starting offense sat out? Oh yeah, no one did. To add another layer, Alabama and Georgia were the 4th and 18th ranked offenses respectively taking on the 114th (OU) and Texas 67th (UT) ranked defenses respectively.

Similar to how I did it above, how about the Big 12 performance against their SEC foes against the average defensive performance for the season? This is actually pretty interesting. The SEC actually did better against Big 12 defenses than Big 12 teams did. SEC offenses averaged 62 more YPG and 3 more PPG than the Big 12 averages for the season. Kind of an interesting twist that I was not expecting but numbers are numbers.

Summary: To be honest, this is sort of a push statistically with YPG favoring SEC offense and PPG favoring the Big 12 defense, although it certainly provides evidence to counter the SEC (and broader CFB) narrative that the Big 12 plays no defense.

SEC in the Big 12: Here is where things get interesting. As a little thought experiment, let’s take any given SEC team and hypothetically subject them to a full slate of Big 12 offenses based on the average performance of the seven SEC vs Big 12 match-ups. If we add 100 YPG and 9 PPG to the SEC defensive season averages, the vaunted SEC defenses become quite average to below average in the rankings and in most cases comparable to and/or below the Big 12 averages.

For example, Alabama would drop all the way from 10th to 67th on total defense (coincidentally one spot ahead of Texas) and from 4th to 42nd in PPG allowed, slotted right behind Stanford. Georgia would drop to 77th in both YPG and PPG behind Tulsa and Minnesota respectively (and would be giving up 28 PPG on average, a point total that sounds oddly familiar…) In fact, only one SEC defense would remain in the top 50 defenses in both categories and that would be Mississippi State (23rd and 47th respectively). Again, Mississippi State’s defense was freakishly good this year.

If we perform the reverse experiment, the Big 12 shoots up in the rankings. You get the point.

Bowl Season: As stated, this is the great equalizer. The SEC is not at liberty to fix their schedules here. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Looking over the past 5 bowl seasons since the CFP started, the Bowl records by conference are remarkably similar. The PAC 12 is the worst, which I don’t think comes as a shock to anyone. As I would also suspect, the SEC is the best, but difference is negligible. How negligible? If the ACC or Big 10 had won only a single game more in total, they would both be above the SEC. Conversely, had the SEC lost one more game, they would be below both conferences. The Big 12 would need two more wins, two more losses by SEC or one more win by the Big 12 and more loss by the SEC to be tied. Get the picture? Over 5 seasons of bowl games, the conferences are essentially separated by a single win. Is the SEC ranked the highest? Yes. Is the difference anywhere as great as the perception of their superiority? Not even close.

Sugar Bowl: Back to the Texas/Big 12 tie-ins. The Sugar Bowl is the big stage annual Big 12 vs SEC match-up, with the CFP years being the exception (though that match-up can still happen). An SEC team has played in the last 7 straight Sugar Bowls with 2 being CFP games. The SEC is only 2-5 in those games overall and 1-3 against the Big 12. Also, Alabama, the crown jewel, has represented the SEC in 3 of those games and is only 1-2. The SEC has made the argument that its teams underperform in non-CFP years because they view it as a consolation bowl. Well, I don’t think any team in the history of the CFP has an argument of being ‘screwed’ quite like TCU. If you recall, TCU was ranked 3rd for the first CFP and fell all the way out after championship weekend despite not losing (they just didn’t play as the Big 12 had no championship game at the time and the Big 12 proclaimed TCU ‘co-champions’ with Baylor). TCU went to the Peach Bowl because the Sugar Bowl was one of the CFP semifinals that year (where, coincidentally, #1 Alabama got handled by #4 Ohio State). And what did TCU do in their consolation bowl? They beat the hell out of Ole Miss 42-3 (an Ole Miss team that beat SEC Champ Alabama that season). Now THAT is what making a statement looks like when you feel like you got screwed. So anyone making the ‘consolation bowl’ excuse for the SEC is a hack.

Overall Summary:

So, what should we make of the SEC conference superiority? I think the data certainly puts a large crack in the SEC mystique and lends support to the theory of the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the superiority of the SEC (manufactured through strategic scheduling combined with Alabama’s Alabama-ness and promulgated through the pundits). While it remains the home of the single most dominant program in the past decade, it is a very top-heavy conference that relies on perception to overshadow reality. Clemson’s absolute dismantling of the SEC crown jewel along with Texas’ complete handling of the #2 SEC team illustrate that the parity among the conferences is not just between the fifth through (insert appropriate number of teams based on specific conference) teams. It extends to the top as well.

Coming back to the Big 12 specifically, based on this thought experiment combined with the actual performance against the SEC this year, which is more plausible? That the Big 12 just sucks at defense which bloats the offensive statistics or that the Big 12 is home to exceptional offenses that any conference would struggle to defend if they had to play 9 games against it? Seems like the data and on-field performance make it pretty clear that it’s the latter.

Regardless, thank god for bowl season where the SEC gets exposed each and every year as being on par with every other conference. We are reminded that the current lack of parity in CFB is not conference based at all. It is program specific (ie Alabama and Clemson). I am curious when the ACC is going to start to get the treatment based on Clemson, but not going to hold my breath for it.

You can run, SEC, but you can’t hide (non-conference schedule aside, of course).

Also, we want Bama (and to a slightly lesser extent, Clemson)!

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