For the past six years, the SEC has dominated college football, winning the BCS National Championship each year. Last year, this dominance reached its pinnacle when Alabama and LSU took up both spots in the National Championship Game. But this year was the year the bully that haunted the rest of the college football world would be taken down.
The College Gameday panel picked zero SEC teams to win the national championship; in fact they didn’t even pick one to be in the game.
“The PAC-10 has too much talent,” they said, and “This is the year Florida State puts it all together”.
These view changed pretty quickly though, when No. 2 Alabama played No. 8 Michigan in the first week of the season and made another top ten team look like they didn’t belong on the same field.
By the time the first BCS rankings came out, Alabama was back at No. 1. Then in Week 11 Texas A&M shocked the nation and beat Alabama, 29-25, at Tuscaloosa. This thrust three non-SEC teams, Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame, respectively in front of Alabama. With Alabama out of the No. 1 position, the SEC was on the outside looking in at the National Championship picture for the first time in six years. College football fans all over the country celebrated; t didn’t matter if their team was in contention or not, at least someone besides the SEC would win.
Then in Week 12, No. 1 and 2, Kansas State and Oregon both lost, placing Alabama back at No. 2 in the nation and Florida and Georgia directly behind them. Now the SEC is once again pretty much guaranteed a spot in the BCS National Championship Game for the seventh straight year. The team that will face off against Notre Dame will be decided Dec. 1 in Atlanta at the SEC championship game between Alabama and Georgia.
According to the BCS computer rankings, Notre Dame is the best team in the country. But according to odds makers, Notre Dame wouldn’t be the best team in the SEC, in fact not even close. The odds makers show Notre Dame as an underdog to five SEC teams, two of those with three losses.
If the past six years haven’t proved it, this year has. In college football, it’s the SEC’s world and the rest of the country is just living in it.
