SEC Teams Remain Hypothetically Undefeated, Even After Taking Bad On-Field Losses

If college football games were hypothetical, the SEC would be undefeated against other conferences. Not just in a single game, or in a few games, or a half season, or even a full season. Ever. The SEC is hypothetically undefeated in the history of college football. They have never lost a hypothetical game. And they never will.

Other teams though, are hypothetically much worse. Because they have a different conference patch on their uniforms, they would never be hypothetically able to survive the gauntlet of SEC opponents like Arkansas, Kentucky and South Carolina. This is not arguable, this is a hypothetical truth. The SEC is automatically better and tougher and any team who plays in the SEC is automatically hypothetically better than any other.

But don't take my word for it, listen to ESPN's Paul Finebaum. He's still banging the drum for hypothetical results determining rankings, playoff spots, and who knows, maybe even championships.

RELATED: Paul Finebaum Launches Unprovoked Attack On Big Ten, Comments Will Enrage Fans: WATCH

Unfortunately for Finebaum and the SEC, we do still actually play college football games, and the results don't always match the reputation.

EUGENE, OREGON - OCTOBER 11: Indiana Hoosiers players and fans celebrate a 30-20 win over the Oregon Ducks at Autzen Stadium on October 11, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Images)

SEC Teams Lose Actual Games Despite Hypothetical Dominance

There's no question that the Alabama Crimson Tide are one of the best 10-15 teams in the country this season. They still lost to the Florida State Semnioles, who are now 3-4 overall and 0-4 in the vaunted ACC. So when Finebaum says that the Indiana Hoosiers would never be able to survive the SEC gauntlet, does he also believe that Bama would never be able to survive the clearly much tougher ACC schedule?

To highlight the absurdity of the SEC's imaginary dominance, we can look at resume rankings. These are backwards-looking, meaning they measured what has already happened, not what you would project to happen moving forward. ESPN's SP+ has a "Resume SP+ ranking," explained as follows:

"Résumé SP+ compares each team's scoring margin (capped at 50 points for a given game) to what an average top-five team would be expected to generate against a given opponent. If a top-five opponent would be projected to win a game by 10.0 points, and a team wins by 15 instead, that's a +5.0 rating for that game. By the end of the season, only a handful of teams will have a positive rating because clearing a top-five bar is obviously very difficult. (Note: A seven-point penalty for losses is applied to the rating as well, meaning your rating has seven points deducted for each loss.)"

The number one team in the country by Resume SP+? The Indiana Hoosiers at +9.9. The second-best team in the country by Resume SP+? The Ohio State Buckeyes at +3.9. Those are the only two teams with a positive rating. Neither play in the SEC. 

Texas A&M does rank third, but the Oregon Ducks are #4. Texas Tech is #5, BYU is #6, Miami is #7. There's one SEC team in the top 7 by Resume SP+, which again, measures how well a team performed against their schedule, relative to what an average top-5 team would be expected to do.

For the record, Georgia is #8, Georgia Tech #9, Notre Dame #10. Two SEC teams in the top-10. This is the gauntlet that would be hypothetically impossible for other conference teams. 

Does this mean the SEC is a cakewalk full of easy wins? No, of course not. But other programs have caught up. Even Texas A&M, the conference's best team this year, ranks just 5th in overall team efficiency this year. Utah has a strong case, per the analytics, as the second-best team in the SEC this year. Yet because their program's brand name isn't as impressive as say, Alabama, they're dismissed and laughed at.

At the end of the season, however, based on how most of the SEC has actually performed, it'll once again be other programs laughing at those who inexplicably chant the name of their conference.