How the SEC Could Take a Playoff Hit in 2016's Very 1st Weekend

Who says the SEC doesn't play anybody in nonconference games?

The conference released its entire 2016 schedule on Thursday. Immediately, the Week 1 slate stands out. If you're of the belief that the College Football Playoff era should usher in tougher out-of-conference games, or if you're just a fan of great football, then it's impossible not to love what the SEC has in store during opening weekend.

You can check out the entire slate in the link above, but below are the key games:

Date	Matchup
Saturday, Sept. 3	Alabama vs. USC (Arlington)
Saturday, Sept. 3	Georgia vs. North Carolina (Atlanta)
Saturday, Sept. 3	Missouri at West Virginia
Saturday, Sept. 3	Clemson at Auburn
Saturday, Sept. 3	LSU vs. Wisconsin (Green Bay)
Saturday, Sept. 3	UCLA at Texas A&M
Monday, Sept. 5	Ole Miss vs. Florida State

You can't ask for a much better group of games than that. From the top of the SEC to the middle, there are intriguing matchups. Bleacher Report's Bryan Fischer echoed just about everyone's words on this schedule:

But the give-and-take of a schedule like that is it can set the tone—at least perception-wise—for the rest of year, for better or worse.

If the SEC dominates that set of games, the perception of it being the strongest conference in college football will only grow. If it doesn't perform well, the conference could be in trouble. Not just in the minds of fans or critics, but in the playoff race as well.

Before going any further, it's important to clarify that a bad Week 1 wouldn't eliminate the SEC from the playoff. After all, the Big Ten flat-lined in Week 2 of the 2014 season, but that didn't stop Ohio State from going on a national title run.

To take it a step further, the Pac-12 didn't have the greatest opening weekend this year, going 2-2 against fellow Power Five teams with additional losses to Hawaii, Portland State and Boise State. Yet Stanford (6-1) and Utah (6-1) are still very much in the playoff discussion.

The Cardinal are even drawing comparisons to Ohio State from 2014 in terms of starting slow and finishing strong.

A bad opening week would, however, eliminate some room for error for the SEC moving through the rest of the year.

Let's think worst-case scenario first because it's the least likely to happen and the easiest to pass through. If Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Mizzou, Texas A&M and Ole Miss all lose, you're talking about several of the SEC's perceived top-half teams starting the year 0-1.

Since a majority of those teams would still have to play each other—Georgia, in fact, gets Ole Miss and Auburn out of the West Division—natural cannibalization will increase the chances of a two-loss division champion.

That doesn't mean an SEC team couldn't run the table in conference play, but it'd be especially difficult since conference foes know each other best.

For historical reference, no team has gone undefeated in SEC play since LSU did it in 2011. Coincidentally enough, the Tigers are the remaining unbeaten team in the SEC this year.

Would a two-loss SEC champion still be able to crack the playoff field? It would depend largely on how the rest of the college football landscape looked. As of yet, there's no precedent for a two-loss team getting in.

But if the SEC does have a bad Week 1 in 2016, the likelier event is the conference going under .500 against the aforementioned Power Five opponents.

The good thing about these games is some of them have a playoff feel months before the field of four is selected. USC, Clemson, UCLA and Florida State could all be playoff hopefuls next year. Thus, the possibility of losing early to them wouldn't be the worst thing ever.

However, that could come back and hurt the SEC later if head-to-head games are needed as tiebreakers.

Say USC and Alabama, each with a loss, are jockeying for a final playoff spot in early December. Based on Baylor finishing ahead of TCU in last year's final regular-season CFP standings, one would think the Trojans would have the edge in such a hypothetical situation.

Yes, the entire body of work counts. But if the head-to-head doesn't matter, what was the point of the game?

Of course, we're 10 months from knowing how the SEC will do in opening weekend and more than a year away from knowing if a bad showing would prove costly. Talking through possible scenarios long before they happen serves entertainment purposes, but that's about it.

Still, the SEC took on a big challenge by scheduling tough games early and all at once. For that, the conference deserves a ton of credit. But because everything the SEC does is magnified compared to other conferences, the other possibility—that of brutal losses—is going to be on the collective minds of college football fans.

And if the worst-case scenario does come to fruition, will the SEC choose to tackle something like this again?

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football.