The Southeastern Conference was the best conference in college football this season — very few people would doubt that, even those who annually complain about the SEC scheduling cupcakes on the third Saturday of November.
By Matt Zemek
Even if you are the harshest critic of the SEC, you can’t argue that any other conference was stronger in 2018.
The Pac-12 and ACC were obviously terrible. The Big Ten West was a disaster, and Michigan’s display against Ohio State showed that the Wolverines were paper tigers, not ready for prime time. No, the Big Ten really didn’t measure up this season. Maybe the Big 12 can say it had the most entertaining football of 2018, and Oklahoma once again owned the Heisman Trophy with Kyler Murray standing tall in New York, but the Big 12’s second-place team, Texas, lost to Maryland and 6-6 Oklahoma State. Texas made a New Year’s Six bowl only because of a structural provision which says that the loser of the Big 12 Championship Game gets preference for an NY6 bowl slot over other teams in the conference, should the champion (Oklahoma in this case) make the College Football Playoff.
The SEC has unbeaten Alabama as its best team, 11-2 Georgia as its second-best team, and LSU as its third-best team. LSU clobbered Georgia by 20 points. The Kentucky Wildcats and their fans would readily acknowledge that LSU deserved to finish ahead of UK in the pursuit of a New Year’s Six bowl berth. No one in Lexington is complaining about finishing behind LSU.
The controversy surrounding Kentucky relative to the 2018 bowl season is that the Wildcats finished several spots in the rankings behind Florida, which somehow finished in the top 10. Yes, the Gators beat LSU, but whereas Kentucky never did play LSU this season, UK did thump Florida, and it did so in The Swamp. Kentucky fans have a right to feel shafted. The NY6 bowl process, like the College Football Playoff selection process, favors the “helmet” programs — the brand names of the sport with more TV appeal and backroom clout — over the nontraditional schools whose brand names are much more attached to basketball (if anything at all).
The Washington States and Kentuckys of college football have to be one, two, or even three games better than the Texases and Floridas in order to win these NY6 bowl slots. It’s simply how the business works, fair or not.
Kentucky was, essentially, treated like a Group of Five team has often been treated in the bowl process. The Wildcats had a merit-based claim that they belonged in the Peach Bowl opposite Michigan, but Florida will go to Atlanta instead.
Kentucky, locked outside the NY6 candy store, must settle for the Citrus Bowl in a battle of 9-3 teams against Penn State, a team which had a disappointing season. Penn State didn’t beat any of the top teams in the Big Ten. The Nittany Lions lost to Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State. They didn’t play Big Ten West champion Northwestern. Their best non-conference win came against Appalachian State, a good team, but a Sun Belt team.
Kentucky, due in no small part to its membership in the SEC, had a resume which was slightly better than Penn State, and certainly not worse in an overall comparison. (One could say they were relatively equal resumes, a fair claim, but if the needle leaned in any direction, it was Kentucky’s.) Yet, if you talk to most football pundits and commentators, they would tell you that with PSU quarterback Trace McSorley getting a month to heal after the pounding he received in the regular season, the Nittany Lions are likely to smack the Wildcats in Orlando. That is a legitimate football-based reason to value Penn State, but let’s also be honest: If you took these same teams with their same seasons and rosters but switched the jerseys and helmets, the national pundit class would very likely pick Penn State anyway… because the elite programs get the benefit of the doubt.
Kentucky does not. SEC membership is a plus in football… if you have a football brand name. That’s one of the myths of the SEC — namely, that identification always helps teams in the league. No. Ask Auburn how much its SEC identity helped in the 1983 final college football rankings after the bowls, and in the 2004 BCS process. Ask South Carolina, which won 11 games three straight years from 2011-2013 but never made a BCS bowl. If you’re not a “helmet” program, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
You get treated more like UCF or Boise State, less like Alabama or Georgia.
Yes, Kentucky is the SEC team playing the Big Ten on New Year’s Day… but because of legacy and reputation in college football, Kentucky might as well be UCF, which plays its home games in Orlando every autumn.
The Wildcats are playing not just to win the Citrus Bowl, which would be their best bowl win since the 1952 Cotton Bowl, when a man named Paul W. Bryant — you might have heard him be referred to as “Bear” — defeated TCU. More than that, Kentucky is playing for respect. Mark Stoops’ players will be fighting for one victory at the end of one season, but they will also be competing to earn the benefit of the doubt in future bowl controversies, should they emerge. If Kentucky can beat Penn State this time, it might not be snubbed for a bigger and more prestigious bowl game the next time it sits near the cut line in the eyes of New Year’s Six bowl officials with loud-colored blazers.
Kentucky is an SEC team forced to wear Group of Five clothing. If Big Blue can knock off the Nittany Lions and former SEC coach James Franklin on January 1, the Wildcats will shed those G-5 clothes and know that they have graduated to a higher level in college football. That is most centrally what UK is playing for on the first day of 2019.
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