Is The SEC Actually Bad? Conference Drops To 0-5 Against Power 4 Teams After Vanderbilt Loss To Iowa

It's one of the most commonly repeated posts on college football fan social media these days: another hypothetical win for the SEC. 

No other conference dominates hypothetical matchups quite like the SEC. And it's not just fans of the member schools, boosters, the commissioner, their media partners, or even the players who are convinced of their hypothetical dominance. It's the coaches too.

Coaches in the SEC have spent years angrily arguing that it's simply not possible to compare the "gauntlet" of the SEC to other conferences. No one can possibly imagine the rigors of traveling all of 200 miles to play a road game, then following it up with a bye week against an FCS opponent in late November ahead of rivalry week. No other program could possibly succeed in the SEC, the thinking goes, because the crowds are loud and the stadiums are big. Or because Nick Saban's Alabama teams had a dynasty in the 2010's, with his last non-COVID championship coming in 2017, essentially nine years ago. 

That's not an exaggeration, these are the arguments we're hearing week in and week out from SEC coaches and their media partners. Kirk Herbstreit went off during a College Football Playoff broadcast in 2024, saying Indiana had no business being part of the field because they lost by 10 to Notre Dame. Instead, three-loss SEC teams like Alabama or Ole Miss deserved to get in, because playing in the SEC is such an impossible hurdle. This year, he said that the outcome of the SEC Championship Game couldn't matter to Alabama, because simply making it to Atlanta was such a monumental achievement. Then on the same day, said BYU should be punished for losing in the Big 12 Championship Game.

Steve Sarkisian was furious after his mediocre 9-3 Texas team didn't make this year's playoff, implying that losing a game to a bad team like Florida, getting blown out by Georgia, and barely escaping with overtime wins over awful teams like Kentucky and Mississippi State was an unmathed resume. Vanderbilt Commodores head coach Clark Lea said, on OutKick earlier in December, that non-SEC teams should not even be considered for the playoff if they have the same record as SEC teams. 

RELATED: SEC Coach Says Other Conferences Should Be Denied CFB Playoff Spots

Well, Vanderbilt had a chance to back up that statement on Wednesday in the Reliaquest Bowl against a lowly 8-4 Big Ten team with their Heisman Trophy runner-up quarterback starting. The Commodores went 10-2 in the big, bad SEC, losing to just Alabama and Texas and racking up big win after big win against mediocre teams assumed to be good in preseason polls like South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee. Surely, with a resume like that in the incomparable gauntlet of the SEC, an 8-4 Iowa Hawkeyes team would be like playing a high school team.

Unfortunately for Vanderbilt and the SEC, once again, the hypothetical outcome didn't hold up against reality.

Dec 31, 2025; Tampa, FL, USA; Iowa Hawkeyes running back Kamari Moulton (28) reacts after a touchdown against the Vanderbilt Commodores in the first quarter during the ReliaQuest Bowl at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

8-4 Iowa Beats Vanderbilt, Dealing Yet Another Blow To SEC

Iowa dominated the line of scrimmage on Wednesday, allowing Vanderbilt to gain just 51 rushing yards on 22 attempts, good for 2.3 yards per rush. They sacked Diego Pavia four times and added four tackles for loss. Pavia did play well, but the Commodores couldn't run the ball successfully, or get off the field against the "powerhouse" Iowa offense. Even losing the turnover battle and having just 29 minutes of possession compared to 43 for Vanderbilt wasn't enough to stop the Hawkeyes. Despite a late field goal bringing the margin down to seven, the result was essentially never in doubt and Iowa cruised home with a 34-27 win. 

Again, Lea quite literally said that comparing anyone else to the SEC is laughable, disrespectful and offensive.

"This should be about the 12 best teams in the country and a 10-2 team in the SEC … look, obviously we love our league. It just means more here and all that kind of stuff, but there’s a level of respect that needs to be held for the gauntlet we’ve been through and how we’ve met the match and done the things we need to do," Lea told OutKick. "I mean, it is just absurd the idea that we’re going to open the door to teams that play in conferences that aren’t the SEC that have the same record we have. I mean, it’s crazy.

His team's loss to an 8-4 Big Ten team dropped the SEC to 0-5 against Power 4 Conference teams this bowl season and 1-7 in their last 8 bowl and playoff games against the Big Ten.

RELATED: SEC's Disastrous Bowl Season Gets Even Worse

For some context as to how absurd the SEC posturing has gotten, let's again run through a quick list of things that prominent affiliated personalities have said in the last few weeks. 

• SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey: "I actually think we deserve seven in," he said referring to the number of conference teams that should be in the playoff. "I think the seven teams that are in the top-14, half of the top 14 teams are from the SEC. That's an indication that this league is different, the expectations are different, the competition is different, and the rewards should respect each of those elements."
• ESPN's Paul Finebaum: Notre Dame would have had 4-5 losses against Vanderbilt's schedule
• Steve Sarkisian: "If you really look at the body of work, and you look at the Southeastern Conference of what we have to go through every week, you look at the non-conference schedule we played, to go to Ohio State in Week 1 and lose by seven when we outgained them by nearly 200 yards—we got a really good football team. It would be a disservice to our sport if this team is not a playoff team when we went and scheduled that non-conference game."
• Lane Kiffin: ""Texas A&M being [No.] 3 — what more do you want them to do to be [No.] 1?" Kiffin said. " ...People say, 'We need you to schedule hard teams. You're going to play nine SEC teams then another hard one.'"

Again, the SEC is now 0-5 this bowl season against Power 5 teams. They are now 1-7 against the Big Ten in their last 8 postseason games. The SEC's two wins this bowl season are against another SEC team and Tulane. Texas A&M that Kiffin wanted ranked No. 1 scored just three points at home against Miami. A 10-2 Vanderbilt team that lobbied for the playoff lost to an 8-4 team after their head coach demanded every other conference be sidelined to make way for the "It just means more" teams.

SEC booster social media accounts quickly ran to excuses that contradicted what they said just days ago.

Again, this is done. We're done with this. We're done with allowing ESPN to gaslight us into thinking that the SEC is head and shoulders above the rest of college football. We're done with Greg Sankey's ridiculous lobbying. We're done with table pounding lectures from coaches about how much better they are than everyone else, only to see them lose when they actually have to play the games. We're done with the ridiculous notion that because Alabama was great from 2011-2017 that the SEC in 2026 is untouchable. We're done with teams getting preferential treatment by the selection committee because of awful preseason polls that automatically rank SEC teams because of their big stadiums, or something. 

Missouri did not beat a team with a winning record this season. Tennessee did not beat a team with a winning record this season. Tennessee was ranked all season until November 30th. Does this mean that Georgia isn't an elite team that could win the title this year? No. Does it mean the SEC is actually worse than the Big 12? No. Does it mean the SEC will never win again? No. But the automatic, hypothetical assumption that the SEC is just so deep, that it's a gauntlet, that they deserve the benefit of the doubt, is completely, comprehensively false. Bowl games aren't the be all end all, but if the results were reversed, you can bet your life the SEC boosters would act as though they were. 

Sorry guys, it's over.