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It already looks like the SEC West and the B1G East are the two best divisions in college football again
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Yes, it was only one week.
One week out of 13 is not enough of a sample size to make a sweeping declaration. If it was, Texas would’ve been back in 2016. Lord knows Texas wasn’t back when it beat Notre Dame in the season opener, and it isn’t back now.
But one week plus multiple years of evidence seems like enough to make at least one sweeping declaration.
Once again, the best divisions in America are the SEC West and the B1G East.
If you don’t believe that’s been the case in years past, perhaps some numbers will convince you. Since the start of the College Football Playoff in 2014, 13 of the 30 teams that finished ranked in the Associated Press top 10 came from those two divisions.
While Alabama and Ohio State have been the ones leading those respective divisions, it hasn’t been just those two. Four B1G East teams and four SEC West teams earned top-10 finishes in the past three years.
This year, half of the top eight teams in the AP poll are from those two divisions. That was after an opening weekend in which the two divisions combined for an 11-3 mark, with three wins against top-25 teams.
[table “” not found /]It wasn’t just the combined 11-3 mark that was impressive. The way it was achieved stood out.
The SEC West was 2-1 against Power 5 competition (including BYU), and the lone loss was a game in which Texas A&M inexplicably folded in the fourth quarter at UCLA.
The Big Ten East was 3-2 against Power 5 foes, though that mark is actually better than it would suggest. Indiana had a third-quarter lead against No. 2 Ohio State until it fell apart while Rutgers — expected to be arguably the worst Power 5 team in America — stayed within two possessions of a Washington team that’s fresh off a College Football Playoff berth.
So yes, all three of those losses could be considered “quality losses.” But how about the quality wins?
Everybody knows that nobody had a better opening weekend victory than Alabama, which ran away from ACC favorite Florida State in Atlanta. Michigan, the third-place team in the B1G East the last two years, thumped two-time SEC East champ Florida at a neutral site. And Maryland, picked by many to finish sixth in the B1G East, went into Texas and spoiled Tom Herman’s debut.
That’s some serious depth. The biggest takeaway from the entire B1G on opening weekend was how good the bottom of the conference looked. That’s maybe the biggest difference — so far — between this year’s B1G East compared to the last three since it expanded to seven teams.
The SEC West might not have had quite the opening slate that the Big Ten East did, but that’ll change this week. Arkansas will host No. 23 TCU and No. 13 Auburn will travel to No. 3 Clemson. On the B1G side, the game of the week in college football is No. 5 Oklahoma at No. 2 Ohio State.
So by this time next week, we could be looking at the B1G East and SEC West accounting for:
- The No. 1 (Alabama) and No. 2 (OSU) teams already having wins vs. top-5 teams
- 3-1 record vs. top-5 teams
- 6-2 record vs. top-25 teams
- Six teams (Alabama, OSU, Penn State, Michigan, Auburn, LSU) in the AP top 10
That, of course, can only happen if Arkansas, Auburn and Ohio State all win their weekend showdowns, which obviously isn’t a given. What does seem like a given is that for the time being, the two divisions are No. 1 and No. 1a as the top divisions in college football.
Does anyone else come close?
The Pac-12 North looks solid (Washington, Stanford and Washington State are all in the top 25), but that was after an opening weekend in which the only Power 5 team those three saw was Rutgers. The ACC’s Atlantic division also boasts three top-25 teams (Clemson, FSU, Louisville), but in three neutral-site games against Power 5 teams, it went 1-2 with the lone win being Louisville’s nail-biter vs. Purdue.
Plus, neither one of those divisions has been as steady as the B1G East and SEC West in the Playoff era.
The past and the present suggest that the B1G East and SEC West teams will continue their annual offseason tradition of declaring their respective divisions the best in America.
And unless something changes dramatically, those two divisions will be the only ones that can make such an argument.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.