I caught about an hour of Big Ten Media Days this week.
That’s a group of confident coaches. I like that.
Over the course of the hour, I heard three proclaim the Big Ten as America’s best league. A Fox host echoed the sentiments. My assumption is that plenty of the assembled media, coaches and players in the Windy City held that belief. The same could be said for Tampa last week in favor of the SEC.
The Big Ten touts titles. They’ve won the last three. The SEC brags on depth and the week-to-week grind. Believe whoever you want.
The truth is that it doesn’t really matter.
There was a time where the SEC was undisputedly the best league in the country. The SEC dominated the subjective recruiting rankings, won seven titles in a row between four different schools between 2006 and 2012 and churned out more draft picks annually than any other league.
That time has passed.
While it’s fair to question which league is the best, the Big Ten has unquestionably closed the gap. There is more money in the league which spans from coast to coast, and the transfer portal has leveled college football more so than perhaps any rule change in the sport’s history. Five stars aren’t sitting on the bench in Tuscaloosa for two years anymore. Last year some of them signed with Houston, Vanderbilt, Maryland, Texas Tech and Utah.
The Big Ten’s trio of titles certainly presents a very compelling argument. That said, how much credit does the league get for the current state of affairs in Ann Arbor? The Wolverines are 17-9 P.H. (post Harbaugh) and have had seven head coaches, interim and permanent, in three years.
Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana are carrying the mantle.
Rivaling that from the SEC are Georgia and Texas. Five others have made the playoffs. There’s the depth argument. But that’s really where it stops. I don’t see any value in debating how much better or worse South Carolina is compared with Iowa. Same goes for Purdue and Mississippi State as well as Auburn and Wisconsin.
The championship-caliber teams from the two leagues don’t have problems with the middle of the league. Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, generally speaking, haven’t. They find a way to post 12-0 or 11-1. Curt Cignetti has done the same.
If the SEC is going to argue depth, it needs to come from the top. Seven SEC teams have made the 12-team playoff. Four have made it from the Big Ten.
The seven SEC teams are a combined 5-8 while the Big Ten is 11-5 with the two titles. Furthermore, the Big Ten is 3-0 against the SEC in playoff games. Over an admittedly small two-year sample size, the Big Ten’s top has bested the SEC’s elite.
That’s really what matters. Getting in and getting beat isn’t going to do the SEC any favors. And no one is ever going to sweep aside a loss like Ole Miss’s to Kentucky and Florida in 2024 because “the league is so deep”. Same for Texas’s in The Swamp last year which cost them a spot in the playoff.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the SEC’s stable of non-playoff qualifiers is more capable than the Big Ten’s over the last two years, but it’s close. LSU, Florida, Auburn are probably further from their ceilings than Michigan, USC and Washington or Nebraska. But, with what Indiana has done over the last two years, it’s hard label programs the way we used to.
Ultimately, it’s empty fodder in July. Games will be played. Teams with 10 or more wins will get a chance to duke it out in December and January.
The immediate past and present point to the Big Ten, but the future feels wide open.
