SEC Dominates Bowl Season, ACC and Big 12 Come Up Short

Written by Ryan Wright

Twitter: @HogManInLA

With just the college football national championship game left to be played on Monday, Jan. 11, the good news for college football fans now that all the other bowl games are completed is the SEC dominated the competition going 8-2 overall. The winning record serves as proof in the pudding that the SEC is the best football conference in the nation aiding SEC backers in watercooler and online chats. As for the rest of the country, the winning ways only fuels the fire to hate America’s top college football conference a little more going forward serving as a win-win for all.

The SEC opened up the bowl season with LSU taking out Big 12 Conference member Texas Tech 56-27 on Dec. 29. The next day Auburn stopped AAC’s Memphis 31-10 and Mississippi State got the ACC’s N.C. State 51-28. Texas A&M, amid all of the turmoil under center with the deflections of starting quarterbacks Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray, lost to the ACC’s Louisville 27-21.

The Crimson Tide brought home what is easily the biggest win of the postseason for the SEC when they beat the Big Ten’s top seed Michigan State 38-0. The Spartans were held to 239 yards of total offense getting just 29 of those yards on the ground. MSU bottled up Heisman Trophy Award winner Derrick Henry to 75 yards on 20 carries but the star running back did have two scores affecting the outcome of the game.

New Year’s Day was a successful start to 2016 with Tennessee beating the Big Ten’s Northwestern 45-6 and Ole Miss keeping the Big 12’s Oklahoma State down by a score of 48-20. The conference’s second loss, which was easy to see coming, was Florida getting pounded by Michigan by a score of 41-7. The SEC would rally the following day against the Big Ten with Georgia beating Penn State 24-17. Arkansas closed out the regular bowl season beating the Big 12’s Kansas State 45-23.

Alabama can give the SEC the ultimate prize if a win over No. 1 Clemson can be had in Glendale, Arizona. The past two seasons Florida State (2013) and Ohio State (2014) steered the national championship honors away from the SEC after the conference tallied seven consecutive title wins (2006-12) from four different conference members; Florida, LSU, Alabama, and Auburn. In fact, the BCS era was dominated by the SEC seeing five teams in total being crowed national champs, Tennessee being the first winner in 1998. Florida State won two (1999 and 2013) during the BCS era, Oklahoma got one (2000), Miami one (2001), Ohio State notched one (2002), USC got one in 2004 which was later vacated, and Texas upended the USC dynasty at the end of the 2005 season.

Overall 2015 Bowl Season Success and Failures

SEC 8-2

Pac-12 6-3

Conference USA 3-2

Big Ten 5-5

Mountain West 4-4

Sun Belt 2-2

ACC 4-5

Big 12 3-4

Mid-American 3-4

American Athletic 2-6

Independents 0-2 (BYU and Notre Dame)

The ACC can only break even if Clemson can top Alabama but the win would be what everyone remembers for years to come. The Tide last won college football’s top honors in 2012 when they beat Notre Dame 42-14. The two year absence from hoisting the trophy has led many media members to quickly, and wrongly, try to stir up the national debate that the SEC has fallen and the Alabama dynasty is over.

As long as Nick Saban is in Tuscaloosa and the Tide continue to recruit the way they do, especially up front on defense and offense, do not expect Alabama to fall too far out of favor from one year to the next.

As a college football fan, the only unfortunate part about the 2015 bowl season was not seeing top Pac-12 teams line up against SEC squads. The Pac-12 has made a big leap forward in top to bottom play throughout the conference. The Pac-12 started strong out of the bowl season gate going 5-1 but then hit a skid with USC falling to Wisconsin 23-21, Oregon dropping a 31-point lead against TCU falling 47-41 in triple-overtime, and West Virginia outlasting Arizona State 43-42. The only win, which was a big one for the Pac-12 and a big loss for the Big Ten, was Stanford trouncing Iowa 45-16.

Photo credit: LM Otero; Alabama celebrates their berth into the national championship game after beating Michigan State 38-0.