The SEC football numbers that Greg Sankey didn’t share last week
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- The SEC went 2-3 in the 2024 College Football Playoff, with Texas earning the lone wins
- SEC teams posted a 1-5 postseason record against Big Ten teams in in 2024
- Since 2020, non-Georgia SEC teams are just 55-47 versus other power conferences
Let’s get one thing clear up front: I think the Southeastern Conference is the strongest college football league. The fact that the SEC has had the most players selected in each of the past 19 NFL drafts settles that.
However, in the here and now, I do not think the SEC’s actual level of superiority in college football comes anywhere close to matching the league’s perception of its superiority.
Bear with me, I will present some numbers to back that up.
As the college football hierarchy lurches toward potential expansion and a new College Football Playoff format for 2026, the lobbying between and among the sport’s conferences grows intense.
Tooting its own horn last week at its spring meetings in Destin, Florida, the Southeastern Conference distributed to the media a six-page packet filled with various metrics intended to illustrate what the league says is the unique difficulty that teams face in having to play a Southeastern Conference football schedule.
The SEC has had a hard time accepting how last year’s CFP field was filled. You will recall that the league “settled” for only three teams — Georgia, Tennessee and Texas — in the 12-team field, while the Big Ten got four in with Indiana, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State.
Not one of the SEC’s 9-3 teams — Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina — received an at-large bid, but Indiana (11-1 in the Big Ten) and SMU (11-2 in the ACC) did.
Last week in Destin, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said of future playoff deliberations, “How will a 9-3 SEC team be evaluated against others who may have one or two losses? The rigor of (a SEC) schedule is unique, and it stands alone by comparison. How is that best respected in this national evaluation system?”
According to The Athletic’s Seth Emerson, the “schedule strength” packet distributed by the SEC “touted the league as having the hardest schedule every year from 2015 to 2024, according to five computer formulas. It also showed the SEC only had two teams ranked outside the top 50 in three different metrics, a testament to the conference’s depth.”
Conversely, here are some numbers the SEC did not share last week:
▪ Southeastern Conference teams went 2-3 in last season’s College Football Playoff. The only SEC team to win a playoff game, Texas, was playing in the league for the first season after arriving from the Big 12.
▪ There were six head-to-head postseason games, either in the playoff or in bowls, between SEC teams and foes from the Big Ten during the 2024 season — and Southeastern Conference teams went 1-5 in those games.
▪ After an SEC team won the football national championship 13 times in 17 years from 2006 through 2022, there has not been a Southeastern Conference team reach the title game in the past two seasons.
▪ During the 2023 season, Southeastern Conference teams went a combined 12-13 against opponents from other power leagues, including 5-7 vs. Atlantic Coast Conference foes and 1-3 vs. the Big 12.
▪ Of the 14 teams that were in the SEC in 2020 — in other words, the entire league minus newcomers Oklahoma and Texas — only eight have winning records in the 2020s in contests against teams from other power conferences.
▪ Since 2020, SEC teams are 66-48 overall in head-to-head meetings against teams from other power conferences. However, if you take out Georgia, 11-1 in such games, the rest of the SEC is only 55-47 vs. teams from its peer leagues in the 2020s.
In touting its own strength, the SEC is attempting to set the context for how the College Football Playoff field will be selected starting in 2026. The 12-team format used for the first time last season will remain in place in the coming year, but is up for renegotiation afterward.
As has been widely reported, the Big Ten favors a 16-team playoff with four automatic bids each guaranteed to itself and the SEC; two automatic bids each for the ACC and the Big 12; and one automatic bid for the highest-ranked conference champion from the so-called Group of Five leagues.
There would be three at-large bids under that plan.
Most of the college football leagues other than the Big Ten and the SEC seem to prefer a 5-11 format, with five conference champions (presumably the Power Four plus the highest-ranked from the Group of Five) earning automatic bids and 11 at-large bids.
Interestingly, reporting from the SEC’s spring meetings indicated that the league’s athletics directors favored the 4-4-2-2-1-3 plan, while the Southeastern Conference head football coaches were more inclined toward the 5-11 format.
One suspects Southeastern Conference coaches calculate that, if there were to be 11 at-large berths available, the SEC can claim more than the four automatic bids that would be promised it in the other plan.
The key to that happening, of course, is that perceptions of the “unique” strength of SEC football must be robust.
Toward that end, the Southeastern Conference would do well to stop proclaiming its football superiority and get back to more often asserting it on the field against teams from other power leagues.
SEC teams vs. other power leagues
The records of Southeastern Conference football teams against teams from other power conferences since 2020:
▪ Alabama, 6-3.
▪ Arkansas, 4-2.
▪ Auburn, 1-5.
▪ Florida, 3-6.
▪ Georgia, 11-1.
▪ x-Kentucky, 5-3.
▪ LSU, 4-5.
▪ Mississippi, 7-2.
▪ Mississippi State, 4-2.
▪ Missouri, 4-3.
▪ y-Oklahoma, 1-0.
▪ South Carolina, 3-5.
▪ Tennessee, 5-3.
▪ y-Texas, 3-1.
▪ Texas A&M, 3-4.
▪ Vanderbilt, 2-3.
x — includes a 52-21 win against Louisville and a 20-17 victory over Iowa in the Citrus Bowl from the 2021 season that were subsequently vacated by the NCAA.
y — joined the SEC for the 2024 football season.
This story was originally published June 3, 2025 at 6:20 AM.
