ESPN doesn’t know what to believe in anymore. Before the College Football Playoff started, the SEC commissioner went out of his way to say that five SEC teams in this year’s field wasn’t enough; seven teams deserved to be in. Traditionally, that would make sense and probably be factually justified. Unfortunately, the SEC’s traditional dominance over the rest of college football doesn’t exist much anymore.
The worldwide leader in sports is so desperate to defend its crown jewel marketing giant that they’re willing to adopt Miami into the SEC just to keep the conference relevant.
"The Miami Hurricanes are the most traditionally 'SEC football team' in all the country. ... This team absolutely dominated from a physicality standpoint, from an athleticism standpoint."
— First Take (@FirstTake) January 9, 2026
—@Realrclark25 on the Miami Hurricanes win over Ole Miss pic.twitter.com/1TPgwjja3R
There were some ESPN personalities that argued Vanderbilt or Texas should have been in the CFP over one of the Group of 5 teams or even Miami, the fourth place team in the ACC. Now, Ryan Clark is going out of his way to claim that Miami is “traditionally an SEC football team” by the way it dominated Ole Miss in the CFP semifinal at the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl.
If any normal person contradicted themselves with such conviction, they’d be confined to a 72-hour hold for medical evaluation. When you have the ESPN title, you simply are making a valid argument. SEC bias is deteriorating college football’s arguments and it’s disrespecting teams like Miami, who is having near unprecedented success in this year’s playoff.
The old discourse around the SEC has to be buried once and for all
It’s time to stop talking about the SEC like it's the crown jewel of college football. Those days are long gone and thanks to NIL and the transfer portal, the SEC doesn’t have the competitive advantage it once had. I’m not ESPN and going to tell you to take my word for it though, I’ll instead throw some facts out to justify the SEC’s downfall.
- This is the third-straight season the CFP title game won’t have an SEC team in it
- SEC went 4-10 in bowl season (two of those wins were intraconference wins)
- SEC went 6-8 against the ACC in bowl season
Yes, those are screaming dominant numbers. This is why the SEC has to stop acting privileged. If they deserved to have seven teams in the CFP, they would. Instead of coming up with all these reasons why their conference should have more teams in, they should worry about winning actual games instead of the hypothetical ones.
The SEC’s grip on the sport was already gone, but tonight triple confirms it. Miami just physically looked way better than the last SEC team standing, and the SEC won’t have a team playing for it all.
— Brandon Walker (@BFW) January 9, 2026
The SEC has fallen. It is no longer what it thinks it is.
The SEC and its constant crying and complaining as if they don’t already have the benefit of the doubt is looking more childish than justified. If we want to be honest, the Big Ten is running the College Football Playoff. Since its expansion, a Big Ten team has played for a national title in both seasons and a Big Ten team will be in the title game this year.
The Big Ten has also won the last two national championships – the SEC’s last national title came by way of Georgia in 2022. The CFP’s SEC problem isn’t what you think it is. There’s more than enough SEC teams in the CFP each season, they just aren’t performing at the level they should with how good they think they are.
Why the SEC will ruin the CFP as expansion talks, auto qualifiers loom
The SEC and the Big Ten are effectively trying to control more than 50 percent of the College Football Playoff seedings with rumored expansion talks. Later this month, a possible 16-team expansion is in play with the Big Ten proposing it and the SEC getting total automatic bids, the Big 12 and ACC get two and then one Group of 5 champion. The SEC proposed simply keeping the 12-team format and just adding four more at large spots.
The SEC, one of the most underperforming conferences considering the argument it makes each year for more teams, is essentially asking for more spots they really shouldn’t have. In fact, adding more teams only increases the chances of them finally getting a team in the title game. If they don’t, though, it looks even worse.
This is why expanding the playoff just to say you got more teams in is a baseless reason to expand. 12 teams is more than enough. There are seven at large spots available each season, if the SEC was that good, they’d control the field every year. But they’re not.
Even when they have the most teams in the field, they’re still disappointing. The SEC is proving they’re not better than any other conference. They just beat themselves and say, “We’ve always been good, give us the benefit of the doubt.” That no longer works and until they start playing for national championships again, don’t have much of an argument for anything.