SEC Coach Says Other Conferences Should Be Denied CFB Playoff Spots

The latest iteration of the College Football Playoff poll once again benefited the SEC, as the Alabama Crimson Tide jumped the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Alabama moved up to No. 9, giving them a strong chance of making the 12-team field, even with a loss to the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship Game.

Alabama moved up despite an awful performance against a very mediocre Auburn Tigers team, averaging just 3.8 yards per play and having a postgame win expectancy of just 44%. But Bama's rivalry game, and the SEC patch, carried the day, as they so often do.

But even that's not enough for the SEC coaches, who are enjoying their favorite time of year: hypothetical SEC win season. And it's gotten to a point where they're getting close to questioning the point of the playoff field at all. 

RELATED: College Football Playoff Poll Has Some Big Surprises, Sets Up Crazy Conference Championship Weekend

The latest example being Vanderbilt Commodores head coach Clark Lea, whose 10-2 team may be on the outside looking in thanks to sitting at No. 14 heading into conference championship weekend. 

Lea made the argument this week to OutKick that any team with the same record as his team can not possibly be compared to the SEC. Similar to Steve Sarkisian's absurdist campaigning, saying not including his three-loss Longhorns team would be a "disservice" to the sport. There's just nothing that the SEC cares more about than hypotheticals. A tale as old as time.

NASHVILLE, TN - APRIL 16: Vanderbilt Commodores head coach Clark Lea during  the Vanderbilt Commodores Black and Gold Spring Game, April 16, 2022, at Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Vanderbilt Commodores ‘Gauntlet’ Deserves Playoff Spot, Says Lea

Why even have the tournament include teams from other conferences when you can just have all the SEC teams play each other? It's worth asking, right?

"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 this week. "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.

"That is the system, so that’s where the work needs to be focused on — fixing it. But some of the goalposts moving is this idea that the top five conference champions are allowed into the playoff. I’ve seen some projections now with teams that have no business being in, and yet, they’re included."

That might be a new high mark for SEC campaigning, and that is an insanely elevated bar to clear. 

Any team that goes 10-2 in a non-SEC conference simply doesn't matter, apparently. And the worst part is, Vanderbilt's resume isn't that impressive, because their schedule hasn't actually been that hard. Despite the conference patches the other team happens to wear.

Per ESPN's SP+, one of the best advanced analytics-based ranking systems out there, Vanderbilt's strength of schedule this season is 39th. One spot ahead of the Miami Hurricanes, another 10-2 team that plays in a conference that doesn't matter. It's behind BYU, who Lea would dismiss as not deserving, since it didn't play the "gauntlet" of, checks notes, like, 2.5 good teams. 

Here's the first part of Vanderbilt's schedule and where those teams rank in SP+.

Charleston Southern (FCS)
Virginia Tech (111th)
South Carolina (51st)
Georgia State (133rd)
Utah State (74th)

That gauntlet man. Holy cow. It's a miracle they won any of those games. To be fair, the schedule got harder in the second half:

Alabama (12th)
LSU (33rd)
Missouri (19th)
Texas (22nd) 
Auburn (29th)
Kentucky (63rd)
Tennessee (21st)

Still, just one team in the top-15 of SP+, and the Commodores were blown out. They went to overtime with Auburn. They had four free wins against awful teams out of conference, and played Kentucky and South Carolina in the SEC. Does this mean Vanderbilt is a bad team, or doesn't have an argument to reach the playoff? No, it doesn't. Their Resume SP+ is No. 11, or right in the conversation.

But what it does mean is that the "SEC gauntlet" is a fiction based on brand names. This isn't an "easy" schedule, per se. It's also not that hard, because despite the big home stadiums and famous names, a number of SEC teams weren't actually that great this year. Even Notre Dame's schedule was only marginally worse, at 44th compared to 39th. Vanderbilt played two games against top-20 teams, per SP+. Oregon played five of them, including against No. 2. 

Guess we should be talking about the Big Ten gauntlet, right? "Some of it is just the silliness of how we’ve settled on trying to make everybody happy and include everybody," Lea said. Agreed. The silliness is trying to make the SEC and their ridiculous superiority complex happy.