As we set our eyes on the 2015 college football season, SEC fans have a few reasons to be worried. Two things next season could end up costing the conference a shot at its first national championship in the College Football Playoff era. Big name coaches in the Big Ten Conference and the weekly bashings handed out to each other in conference play help drive down the SEC’s championship potential.
With the recent hire of Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan, the list of big-name head coaches in the Big Ten can stand toe-to-toe with the more prominent coaches of the SEC. While they’re not going to dethrone the almighty SEC simply by showing up, the players that these coaches are going to put on the field over the next several years will make up teams that can contend for a spot in the playoff.
Headlining the list of these big name coaches is Urban Meyer, the man currently sitting atop the college football world. All Meyer has done in his three years at Ohio State is post an overall record of 37-3. Nobody was really giving Meyer any credit, however, due to the Big Ten’s lack of parity within the conference. This season, which was arguably one of the greatest single-season coaching jobs ever, made people appreciate just how brilliant of a coach Meyer is.
After Meyer, you have Mark Dantonio at Michigan State and James Franklin at Penn State. Dantonio has been at the helm of one of the most consistent college football teams in the country, and lead his MSU program to four 11 win seasons in the past five years. Franklin hasn’t been at Penn State long enough for us to make assessments, but we do know that he’s a winner. Franklin is an excellent recruiter. He gave life to a Vanderbilt program that hardly ever saw success on the football field. It shouldn’t be long before Franklin has Penn State competing for a national title.
The wild card in all of this is Jim Harbaugh. We all know that he can be successful at the college level, so the real question is how quickly he can turn around this Michigan football team. The athletic department and fans of the University of Michigan are hoping sooner rather than later, but being able to land Harbaugh as your next head football coach should be enough to keep them happy until they are back to their winning ways.
However, the biggest threat to the SEC’s chances of bringing home a national title next season will be none other than themselves. We were almost a witness of that this past season, as it took a game-winning fourth quarter drive against Arkansas, an overtime thriller against LSU and a record-setting Iron Bowl for Alabama to make it out of its schedule with only one loss.
Week after week, somebody significant was either defeated or played tough by a team of a lesser ranking within the SEC. Top-tier SEC programs danced in and out of trouble and often times did not make it out alive. Teams such as Auburn and South Carolina, by whom many were picked to win their respected divisions, suffered multiple losses from teams they were expected to beat by double digits.
With lesser SEC programs vastly improving, look for the gap between the best and worst SEC teams to shrink. For the most part, all of the teams in the SEC are going to be able to compete with one another. Don’t be surprised if we are in a scenario this upcoming season like the one we were in this past season, with everybody beating up on each other.
This is both good and bad for the SEC. You’re going to see great games, but if we are stuck with a two or three-loss SEC champion that doesn’t qualify for the College Football Payoff, what does the conference have to show for all of its great teams? If the SEC is once again unable to reclaim a national championship this upcoming season, there is a strong possibility that it’ll be because they were outshined by a Big Ten head coach or fell victim to their own SEC brethren.
By Jacob Horton
Photo Courtesy of USA Today
Nice article.