Big Ten contends with the Big SEC lie and unfair advantage

"It just means more" is what they always say, but the Big Ten has won the last two football national championships, and last season they were 2-0 against the SEC in the playoffs and 3-1 in other bowl games.

That's 5-1 head-to-head, after the argument got a further boost when USC, 4-5 in their first year in the Big Ten, beat LSU 27-20 to start the season and Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl, 35-31.

Maybe "it just means more" should be changed to "we just cheat more."

The SEC won 15 of 27 national championships since the BCS era began in 1998, but the conference has always tilted the table in two ways. One, they start the season with half the league ranked in the preseason Top 25s, and two, they play eight conference games and a November cupcake.

The preseason rankings give them an enormous unearned edge, as teams that start ranked move down slowly. The reputation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At playoff time 9-3 SEC teams will crow about how hard their schedule is and how "we beat six ranked teams."

Then every November comes the big lie. While every other conference is going toe-to-toe in some of the toughest road games of the year, the SEC schedules a home nonconference game against Mercer, Coastal Carolina or Samford.

That one move guarantees the SEC record inflation, boosting rankings while resting starters and staying at home. In a 16-team league it guarantees eight extra wins and eight fewer losses. Every 7-5 team becomes 8-4. Every 8-4 team becomes 9-3 and clamoring for a playoff berth.

Oregon has a November road game at Iowa. Iowa has to travel to USC on November 13. Nebraska goes to Penn State and UCLA in November. Imagine how manageable the schedule becomes if teams take their toughest November conference road game off the schedule and replace it with an easy win, after starting the season with an inflated ranking.

At SEC Media Days commissioner Greg Sankey called his league "a superconference." He said, "We have common sense geography, restored rivalries, record-breaking viewership."

All of that is true, and the conference dominates the recruiting rankings and sends more players to the NFL every season. But what's unpalatable is the way they rig the game in the first place with rankings inflation, record-padding and what amounts to an extra bye in November.

Only one SEC team won a playoff game last year and the two others were one-and-done. The Big Ten sent four to the playoff and two made the semifinals.

College football needs some consistency about schedules. Yesterday Indiana downgraded their schedule by canceling a home-and-home series with Virginia and replacing it with home games against Kennesaw State and Austin Peay.

Dumbing it down in pursuit of an easy route to the playoffs won't make the games more interesting or appealing to fans, who are paying a premium to underwrite rapidly escalating player deals. It's anti-competitive. Every Power 4 team ought to play 10 Power 4 games, and nine conference games, and no rankings until after at least Week 4.

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