Ohio State Football: East primed to help Big Ten dethrone SEC
No longer when considering a possible national title contender from the Big Ten do you simply think Ohio State football as the East Division is strong.
The Ohio State football program is the only one from the Big Ten to win a national championship over the last 21 seasons. Two titles and two runner ups to be exact.
The SEC has 10 championships over the same span. Tennessee has one, LSU and Florida two and Alabama five.
That sustained success laid the foundation for the SEC faithful’s ego that the SEC is the best conference in college football.
The rest of the country continues to argue that conferences do not win titles. Teams do.
That does not stop the SEC fans from riding Alabama’s success and claiming it as its own over the last decade.
I believe the SEC’s fascination with conference supremacy handicaps the game. That myth and the annual love fest by the media just fuels a delusional fanbase.
I can’t recall a Florida State fan celebrating Clemson’s championship in 2016 or Michigan jumping on Ohio State’s bandwagon in 2014, but ask any fan of an SEC team not named Alabama and they’ll tell you the Crimson Tide won their titles by grinding through the rigors of the SEC schedule.
By that measure, the winner of the Big Ten East will win the college football playoff this year.
No other division is stacked like the Big Ten East. I am not overlooking Wisconsin, but Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan and Michigan State are all Top 15 teams that will slug it out over nine weeks to produce a candidate for the CFP.
The SEC West has Alabama, Auburn and perhaps LSU now that Joe Burrow will be leading the Tigers’ offense. The East only has Georgia.
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The ACC Atlantic has Clemson, Florida State and N.C. State. The Coastal has Miami.
The Big 12 has Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas.
The Pac-12 South has USC and the North has Stanford and Washington.
Is it possible the Big Ten will become the best conference because of the East?
The purist in me says it does not matter, but last season proved that the College Football Invitational Committee can be swayed by myths of conference superiority.
Georgia and Alabama meeting in the championship last season further cemented that myth and it is up to the other conferences to quash that illusion.
Clemson and Ohio State seemed most prepared to do it. Penn State, Washington, Oklahoma, Miami, Stanford and maybe Michigan have decent shots. Everyone else is on the outside.
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If one of these teams wins it, the SEC faithful will still claim the conference rules college football. They’ll be wrong, but at least the title won’t reside with one of their teams.