2010 College Football Preview: Can the SEC Win Five in a Row?

Sometimes, it is just easy to miss the big picture.

Critics and writers are easily seduced into thinking our vantage point is more global—that we are granted a grander landscape simply because we make an effort.

We peer at the expanse just inches from our face—feeling omniscient—failing to realize how limited the window seat view on an airplane truly is.

I know I am guilty of it.

For all the energy and memory bytes used to dissect recruiting classes and opine on coaching moves, the most important theme in college football right now is also the least repeated.

The BCS belongs to the SEC.

The run of four straight national championships by SEC teams has rendered all the debating and exhortation from fans of other conferences to little more than white noise. They can yell, scream, type, and troll all they want, but the fact remains that seniors who signed letters of intent this past season spent their high school careers watching SEC teams win the national championship.

In the age of parity and hyperbole, it is a run like no other.

Since the creation of the BCS for the 1998-1999 season, SEC schools have posted a 14-5 record, though neither the conference nor any of its members holds current records for appearances.

The SEC is also 6-0 in BCS national championship games. No other conference has a winning record in the final game.

Is there really any reason to think that next year’s SEC champion will not also be next year’s national champion?

The Front Runner

The 2010 college football season will begin as the previous one ended, with Alabama on top.

Despite attrition, the Tide returns plenty, notably the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and the quarterback who has never lost.

Exactly where would another 14-0 season put Greg McElroy among the pantheon of great college quarterbacks? 

Statistics be damned, if McElroy can guide the Tide to another undefeated title, he goes in the conversation. Any argument claiming to topple 28-0 with back-to-back national titles would sound excusatory if not just plain dumb.

Not to imply a soft schedule for Alabama—Penn State comes to town, the Iron Bowl is revitalized, and the West is the strongest half of the conference— but the gravity of chasing immortality might be the toughest opponent McElroy faces all season.

How Alabama coach Nick Saban guides his team in managing that pursuit—something that publicly weighed on Urban Meyer and his Florida Gators last season—is the headline question regarding the SEC’s chances of going five-for-five.

Those Predicting a Down Year for the SEC Have Their Ammunition

Only four teams—Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, and South Carolina—return their full-time starting quarterbacks from last season. The conference lost its marquee name at the position in Tim Tebow, and other multiple-year starters like Jevan Snead and Jonathan Crompton are headed to the NFL.

While quarterbacks in the SEC are not generally shouldered to go out and win games—Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett an obvious exception—they are expected to perform at highly efficient levels against the deepest pool of defensive talent in the nation.

With two-thirds of the conference’s teams looking to players with little real playing time—if any—in the flagship post, it is hard not to think that growing pains could add a loss to a team not expecting one in any given week.

If inconsistent play pushes the next four or five teams after the conference champion closer to 8-4 than 10-2, does the math push a one-loss SEC past other contenders as it has in the past?

Not This Year

In each of the past four seasons the SEC has placed multiple teams in the top 10 of the preseason Coaches' Poll. In fact, only the 2007 poll had fewer than three SEC teams in that group.

A mitigating factor in placing the SEC Champion automatically into the BCS Championship game the last four years has been the high ranking of the losing team in the conference title game. Only once during this run—the 2007 season—has the SEC Championship Game not featured two top 10 teams.

An SEC team does not get to the national championship game that year if either of the top two teams—Missouri and West Virginia—wins its final conference game. Instead, Oklahoma defeats Mizzou in the Big 12 title game, and the Mountaineers fall to Pittsburgh in the Backyard Brawl.

No. 7 LSU takes down No. 15 Tennessee for the SEC crown that same weekend and then jumps to the second spot in the final poll, setting up the title fight against Ohio State. The Tigers won 38-24, and the SEC took its second national title in a row.

Even though LSU had two losses that season, the SEC had seven other teams ranked among the top 25 during the season. That depth kept LSU in the picture.

You Don’t Have to Climb If You Start at the Top

Where the SEC has benefited from a glut of ranked matchups in its teams’ conference schedules, upstart programs from schools whose conferences do not receive automatic bids to the BCS party have paid the price for want of such games in their schedules.

Most notably, unbeaten Boise State and Utah teams have not had enough premium wins during the year to climb to the top of the rankings. As ranked teams have lost to other ranked teams in front of or near them, non-AQ teams have bumped against the glass ceiling of conference prestige.

However, while the BCS calculus has kept such undefeated teams from playing for the national title, they have been able to break through into other BCS games. The Mountain West Conference and the WAC are each 2-1 in BCS games, with signature wins over Oklahoma and Alabama.

The growing respect for the caliber of top programs from non-AQ conferences is likely to culminate in a top five preseason ranking for Boise State this next season. If the Broncos can survive the September tests of Virginia Tech and Oregon State—both likely to start the season in the top 20—this could be the year the protective alignment of the big six conferences takes it in the gut.

An interesting question to ponder is whether or not the window for a non-AQ team is closing. Of all such teams to play in a BCS bowl, only Boise State in 2010 received an at-large bid. All other invitees received automatic bids due to being ranked in the top 12.

What happens if Notre Dame—with an automatic bid for finishing among the top eight teams—returns to relevance?

An Improving Non-Conference Schedule

Detractors of SEC dominance point first to soft scheduling of non-conference opponents as the primary reason top SEC schools are allowed to continually post the best records year after year.

Every year Florida does not schedule an out-of-state, regular season, non-conference game—something not done in almost 20 years—the claim grows in strength. As tough as the SEC might be top to bottom, the abundance of directional and FCS schools on the rest of the schedules is a black eye for the conference.

The criticisms have not fallen on deaf ears, however. This season marks a new trend for many SEC schools in tougher scheduling, as many will take on top teams from other conferences.

In addition to a few regional rivalries we have become used to—Florida vs. Florida State, Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, South Carolina vs. Clemson—SEC schools have decidedly tougher tests lined up for 2010.

Penn State’s visit to Bryant-Denny Stadium on Sept. 11 might be the most consequential game of the season.

LSU opens the year against North Carolina on Sept. 4 and then hosts West Virginia three weeks later.

Oregon could be a top five team when they travel to Knoxville on Sept. 11 to take on a Tennessee team—and new coach—anxious to prove itself.

Gene Chizik and Auburn put their momentum—and building expectations—on the line against Clemson on Sept. 18.

In between Bama and Auburn, Arkansas travels to Arlington on Oct. 9 to face a Texas A&M team trying to save coach Mike Sherman’s job this season.

On Sept. 25, Ole Miss hosts Pat Hill and his play-anywhere Fresno State Bulldogs, who have beaten plenty of non-conference opponents in their own backyard.

With the exception of Tennessee, the SEC will likely enter the game as the favorite. A loss in any of these games has ripple effects across multiple conferences.

For instance, say a young Ole Miss team overlooks Fresno State but beats LSU for the third year in a row. If LSU has beaten both the Tar Heels and the Mountaineers—each possible contenders for their respective conference titles—it puts real value on a Boise State conference win over Fresno State.

This is just one example of the crazy undercurrent each one of these SEC non-conference games could have on the rest of college football.

It’s about time.

The Call

An interesting fact about each of the last four SEC Champions—and national champions: None were the preseason favorite to win the conference. It was close only in 2007—again—when LSU opened in the Coaches' Poll at No. 2, but it was No. 3 Florida that had the most first place votes and was picked to win the SEC. 

There are just too many questions on too many teams this next season to count on overall conference depth pushing the SEC to the apex.

Sweeping a much tougher non-conference schedule for top SEC teams is unrealistic, and the league may well eat itself in conference play.

In other words, it is Alabama or bust.

Nick Saban has a chance this year to do what Urban Meyer could not last year: Win it with a team that is supposed to. Doing so would effectively end the best coach debate.

Undefeated seasons are rare, and consecutive ones in major conferences even more so. Alabama’s quest this year is unique not just because of its infrequency, but also its subtext. Can Mark Ingram win back-to-back Heismans? How special is Greg McElroy? Who is the better coach, Saban or Urban?

As masterful as Saban is, the Tide stumbles once during the year. With all the variables in play this year, that one loss is enough to keep the SEC on the outside looking in.

At least that is what the view from 17F tells me.

Jeb Williamson covers Ole Miss Football as a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He welcomes and appreciates all comments. Click here to visit his profile page for other pieces.