Debunking the SEC’s latest strength of schedule propaganda

The SEC knows it’s dominance in college football is slipping so the conference’s loudest voices are churning out content for the propaganda machine to spit into the ether.

New LSU head coach Lane Kiffin joined Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take on Wednesday and was clearly frustrated by the assertion that the Big Ten had surpassed the SEC due to its recent College Football Playoff success.

“Our bottom [half of the conference] is harder than theirs,” he said, attempting to explain away the SEC’s lack of success against its northern rival. “We’re going to beat each other up more… their top teams and our top teams when they go to the playoffs, [the Big Ten is] in better shape – that stuff matters.”

Kiffin went on to claim that it was more beneficial for teams like Ole Miss, his previous employer, to forego season openers against ranked non-conference opponents — the Rebels were undefeated (20-0) against less consequential non-conference foes under his leadership — because programs like LSU (which went 1-3 in its last five ranked-on-ranked season openers) aren’t rewarded later in the season for participating. Well, maybe have you considered, Lane, that the Tigers weren’t rewarded because they lost the games?

SEC schedule superiority is a farse and the data doesn’t lie

Over the last two seasons the Big Ten has gone 8-2 against SEC opponents in bowl games. Not CFP games, just bowl games. Before the SEC folks claim non-CFP bowls are irrelevant to this discussion, this is as close as we’ll get to the bottom vs. bottom comparison Kiffin brought up to defend his argument. Though it would be quite entertaining to see a Maryland vs. Mississippi State or Rutgers vs. Kentucky to decide things.

But if we’re going to talk championships and playoff success, the SEC propaganda machine has a fun little spin to their narrative on that as well. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian took a shot at a different power conference which used to host the Longhorns for 28 seasons.

“There’s a team in our state that plays in another conference that has a schedule that I would argue if I played with our twos and our threes, we could go undefeated, and they’ll probably make the CFP this year,” Sarkisian told Orange Blood’s Anwar Richardson, a not-so-subtle dig at 2025 Big 12 champion Texas Tech.

Okay, Steve. Let’s check the numbers. Texas was a member of the Big 12 from 1996-2023 and in that nearly 30-year span the Longhorns went undefeated with their ones a grand total of four times. That was in the program’s heyday too.

It’s beyond obvious the SEC just wants to stay in its little bubble of tradition and stomp its feet until the rest of the college football world just hands it top recognition because – checks notes – it just means more? That’s not the reality we live in anymore.

The Big Ten has won the last three national championships because the teams got better and that happened because they played tougher non-conference opponents, built higher-quality resumes and then beat four of the SEC’s best to lift the trophy.

Like Kiffin said, the Big Ten is in better shape when the playoffs come around. That’s because of their tougher schedule. Advocating for an easier non-conference slate because the SEC moved to match the rest of the sport with a nine-game conference lineup is a self own. You’re literally admitting you can’t handle the spotlight until there’s a trophy on the line and even then the SEC has come up short.

Let’s stop letting the SEC sit on its pre-CFP expansion laurels and force it to accept the reality it needs to step up to earn back respect. Anyone can win games but winning against playoff-caliber opposition at any point in the year just means more.

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