The SEC is the New Big Ten: The NCAA Block Squares Pool

I should start by giving thanks. I had to fly back to Washington DC from Phoenix AZ yesterday and I was able to watch most of the early window on live television on the airplane. Thank you Delta. 

Round 1 is now complete and I think the biggest takeaway has to be the bizarro world we are in that has the Big Ten performing well and the SEC being the dog of the power conferences. The SEC went 3-5 over the last two days and all five losses were loud! 

• Kentucky being handled by Oakland
  
• Auburn losing to an Ivy League school 
• South Carolina getting blown out by Oregon
• Florida giving up 102 points to Colorado
• Mississippi State getting blown out by a Big Ten team in the first game

And all of this just a couple of days after the SEC Commissioner petitioned to remove bids for automatic qualifiers from smaller leagues to make more bids available for the "more competitive basketball leagues." 

Oh, and Kentucky fans don't seem to be taking this loss well as evidenced by this Twitter post:

On the other end of the spectrum, the Pac 12 minus 10 is currently 5-0, and the Big East is 3-0. 

As for the block squares, the $25 games are now complete and once again we have a few multiple winners in the pool. Leading the charge is Reggie Holt who already has 3 wins. As for you tournament host, we have now had 95 games played since I started this last year. I haven't even seen a game close enough to my numbers to root for an outcome. I am going to quit gambling shortly. You will all miss me when I am gone. 

Results for Day 2 are below:

Starting today, squares are worth $50 apiece. Good luck everyone! 

--Your Commissioner

Let Me Be Loud Wrong Early...

The final College Football Playoff rankings will be revealed on Sunday night, and I am positive that I will be really wrong about what I think should and will happen. Why do I say this? Well, because I believe that there should not be a path for Ohio State to be in the final four.

I said Ohio State has to be left out!

If everything stays status quo, I think that the final four should be:

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Washington
4. Penn State/Wisconsin winner

Okay, let me defend this since every expert says that Ohio State is clearly the second best team in the country. Why shouldn't I believe this?

I hate the eye test. They just look like the second best team. Or, the conference is the best this year, it deserves to have two teams. To me, this is the classic old school thinking that got us to a need for playoff committee and process to begin with. If this were just about an eye test, then yes, Ohio State looks great. Unfortunately, we have conferences. We have 12 game schedules. We have conference championship games. We can ACTUALLY determine the best teams in each conference.

How you ask?

WIN. YOUR. FREAKING. CONFERENCE.

The College Football Playoff Committee was established to find the best four teams at the end of the year. If you go to their website, you will find the following regarding the selection of the teams:

The selection committee ranks the teams based on conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, comparison of results against common opponents and other factors.

Ohio State will not play for its conference championship, because it lost to Penn State. If you aren't eligible to play for your conference championship, how can you be considered the best team in that conference? It invalidates the season and renders having a clear conference champion useless.

Look, this is going to be a very hard decision for the committee. The case for Ohio State and/or Michigan appears really strong:

• The Big 10 Champion is going to be a 2-loss team, and everybody really wants to see Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh in the playoffs. College football is a coaches game, and they are the stars
• The Big 10 Champion will have a head to head loss to Michigan
• Wisconsin lost to both Michigan and Ohio State
• The popular vote (polls) have had both Ohio State and Michigan highly ranked the entire year

But again, neither team figured out how to get enough wins to win their division, and there cannot be a reward for not playing in the conference championship.

Again, I am going to be loud wrong. While I truly hope for it, I don't believe that the committee will leave Ohio State out of the playoff. If the Big 12 Champion, and either the Big 10 or Pac 12 Champion is left out, there should be an investigation. Otherwise, there isn't really a need to play the regular season. Want to know who the playoff will be next year? Because I already know. It will be Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, and USC. Boom. Now you can all spend your Saturdays next fall playing golf and completing honey-do lists.

End of an Era? Not just yet...

I am fascinated by the results of the five New Year's Day bowl games. Not because your boy Sinickal had EVERYTHING wrong. After all, everyone had most of them wrong. And for those of you claiming that you did have the SEC going winless, Florida State getting blown out, and the Big Ten going 3-1, where were you on New Year's Eve? I don't remember hearing the trash talk before the games at the volume that I am hearing it now. And if you did believe it before you saw it, you were in a very small minority of sports fans. And none of you said anything!

Okay, back to football. What the hell happened yesterday? I am not quite sure yet, but I am going to classify it as more aberration than evolution. Let's discuss this in the form of questions and answers...

1. Is the SEC over rated?

No, I don't believe it is. I still think that the SEC is a formidable conference and either the best or second best in the country. If I were a school in the Big Ten, I would not start scheduling SEC teams for homecoming just yet. I get that five of the top teams in the conference lost in big spots over two days, but lets look as some of the facts regarding the conferences...

According to fbschedules.com, here are the non-conference winning percentages for the power five conferences against power five teams prior to conference play this year.

Big Ten - 31% 
Big 12 - 40% 
ACC - 44% 
SEC - 71%
PAC 12 - 75% 

With regard to the bowl season, the current record for the SEC is 5-5. By comparison, the Big Ten is 5-4, The ACC is 5-6, and the Big 12 is 1-4. The star of the group is the Pac 12 which is currently 5-1.

So, let's not consider the SEC on the same level as the Sun Belt conference just yet. I am pretty sure that the depth of the conference is real and that the top teams will be just fine.

2. Certainly, we can agree that this is the end of the  current SEC run, correct?

Again, I am not sure that I would stretch that far based on a 40 hour snapshot. Over the last decade, the SEC has shown in wins and in talent that this current run of dominance is not a fluke. Again, here are the facts...

The SEC has produced 8 of the last 10 National Champions, including 7 in a row from 2006 to 2012. This is a near impossible run in which 4 different teams from the conference won more than half of the national championships awarded in the BCS era!

Looking at the NFL draft over the last few years gives the following. According to NFL.com, the SEC has had:

• The most players drafted in each of the last 8 years. 49 players were drafted in the most recent NFL draft.
• The most players drafted in the 1st round in each of the last 4 years. In all four years, at least 10 players have gone in the 1st round. By comparison, the only other conference with as many as 8 during that time is the Big 12.
• The number of 1st round picks by conference in the last five drafts are
• SEC - 50
• Big 12 - 27
• ACC - 21
• Big 10 - 18
• Pac 12 - 17
• Big East - 6
• The total number of picks by conference in the last five drafts are
• SEC - 241
• ACC - 169
• Big 12 - 150
• Big 10 - 154
• Pac 12 - 124
• Big East - 73

It is noted that conference realignment would increase the numbers for the Big East schools that moved to the ACC, Big 10 and Big 12. Despite that, it is difficult to reload over and over again with the amount of talent leaving the SEC every year. And it is an obscene amount of talent!

3. Okay, then what does it mean that Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss all lost in a matter of 40 hours?

I am going to concentrate on Alabama and, to a lesser degree LSU here. Specifically, let's look at two things a little more closely here.

First, go back and look at the rosters of Alabama and LSU from their 2011 regular season game. As of the 2014 NFL Draft, 42 players from those two rosters were selected by teams. By the time all of the players from the rosters have completed their colleges runs, it is estimated that 70 could be drafted. Let me repeat that, 70 players drafted from two rosters in one college game in an "over rated" conference! If you want to see the names and some mind blowing stats, check out this cbssports.com link.

Second, based on information from NFL.com, Alabama has been a talent pipeline for the NFL over the last few years. We can agree that Alabama's biggest weakness was in its secondary this year. It simply gave up too many big plays. That is just one glaring problem caused by the amount of talent lost recently. Consider that Alabama has had 9 defensive backs drafted in the last 5 years, with 5 in the 1st round. The Crimson Tide has also gone 5 consecutive years with multiple 1st round draft picks. That has never been done before. By the way, I could have done the same thing with LSU and it would have been as impressive.

I am not going to say that these schools shouldn't be able to reload, I am saying that sometimes it takes a little time to overcome significant loss. Again, I wouldn't start loading up these teams to enhance your non-conference record.

4. Fine, you can admit that the Big Ten is a much better conference than you thought, right?

Hell. And. No.

Ohio State is really good and Urban Meyer is simply a great football coach. Michigan State is consistently the second best team in that conference and a really good football team. The rest of the Big Ten is dog shit and you can have it.

5. How do we know that the SEC was that good over the last decade, since the playoff system clearly exposed Alabama?

I would simply go back and look at the talent produced. It was not an accident that SEC was pounding anyone it faced when it mattered. This year, the playoff format matched the four best teams in the country. No one, and I mean no one argued that Alabama was not one of them. Even those of you who think that the SEC is over rated as a conference thought Alabama belonged in the Final Four teams.

6. Is this the end of SEC dominance?

Let's not treat the last 48 hours with Twitter gloves. The SEC is not going to stop recruiting or simply not try anymore because its top teams lost in bowl games this year. Dominance in college football is most often ended by external means. That is, scandal and sanctions. I don't believe that the entire conference is going to be placed under probation anytime soon. Therefore, you can continue to fear the talent showing up at those schools

7. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Yes!! In a separate post, we are going to talk about trash talking among fans and fan bases. The trolling that you currently see and hear is not trash talk. It is gloating and post-game posturing. That is different. If you are confident enough in your team to trash talk and tongue wag, then do it right. Damn, I hate people that hide before and during a game then tell you how great they are after the fact!