And now that it’s Michigan’s turn to carry the Big Ten mantle into the College Football Playoff, it’s also the Wolverines’ turn to try to tackle that same-old narrative about SEC dominance.
Not that they were spending any time worrying about it as No. 2 Michigan went through a final walk-through Thursday in preparation for Friday night's Orange Bowl matchup with No. 3 Georgia.
“We don't get caught up in conference versus conference, but you do hear a little bit of that,” said Andrew Vastardis, the Wolverines’ sixth-year senior captain. “So it's a great opportunity to battle it out and get some bragging rights, I guess.”
Any more than that he’ll leave for the fans and the pundits to debate. Once we’re done watching highlights of the Duke’s Mayo Bowl bath, that is, or counting up all the star players who opted out of lesser bowl games this month.
But it will be debated, don't worry. Because that’s one of the enduring traditions in college football: All the regional arguments about who’s better and why, or which fans are more passionate and by what measure. (The SEC actually runs a TV ad campaign that concludes, “Together. It just means more.” So ... case closed, I guess?)
David Pollack, the former Georgia All-American who is part of ESPN’s College GameDay crew, tried his best to downplay that angle Thursday, preferring to focus on the teams and the players themselves ahead of Friday’s playoff games.
“It’s funny, I think this talk happens a lot about conferences,” he said. “And I can tell you … we don’t really care about that crap at all.”
But I think that’s mostly because the Big Ten’s record has been so, um, crummy? At least in the games that matter the most. And never mind that 0-4 start to the bowl season for the SEC this month, because with all the coaches changing jobs and top players deciding to focus on theirs in the NFL, these results probably don’t mean much.
“It's going to have the same logo on there, but it's not the same team that you had during the regular season,” said Arkansas coach Sam Pittman, whose team will face Penn State in the Outback Bowl. “I think that's a little bit what's happened to the SEC. Maybe not. Maybe they just got beat. ... I know I'll catch a lot of heck for saying that for those teams that beat the SEC teams.”
Regardless, this has been a fairly one-sided argument for quite some time. Long before any Twitter fights between Jim Harbaugh and Kirby Smart over satellite camps or last summer’s SEC expansion power play — c'mon down, Texas and Oklahoma — that spurred a new “alliance” between the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC.
And none of that is going to change on a dime, no matter how many dollars those conferences land in new TV deals — the SEC got $3 billion over 10 years from ESPN last winter. — or how many teams they finally agree on in an expanded playoff field. (The SEC is happy to call the Alliance's bluff in that high-stakes poker match, it seems.)
For the Wolverines, though, this is their playoff debut. So they don’t have much to do with the Big Ten’s losing record (3-4) in this four-team enterprise that began in 2014. Or with the league’s sub-.500 mark (1-2) in the two-team Bowl Championship Series that began in 1998, the year after Michigan won its last national championship in football.
They can’t say much about the SEC’s success on this stage, either. Not the nine BCS titles or the four CFP championships or the league’s 20-6 overall record. The Big Ten, in case you’re wondering, is 4-6 over that same span of nearly a quarter-century. All four of those wins belong to Ohio State, as do five of the six losses.
But Michigan, which has lost its last three bowl matchups against SEC opponents, for whatever that's worth, can make a statement against Georgia on New Year's Eve.
The Bulldogs boast the nation’s No. 1 defense and a roster stacked with talent. Smart just signed a recruiting class ranked in the top four nationally for the sixth consecutive year. He has brought in 25 five-star recruits over the last five classes, while Harbaugh can point to just three on Michigan’s current roster, one of whom (safety Dax Hill) was hoping to join his teammates Thursday in time to play in the Orange Bowl.
And sporting an impressive 12-1 record, this Michigan team, which finally toppled archrival Ohio State and then clobbered Iowa in the Big Ten title game, definitely has “created some new buzz,” as Harbaugh put it Thursday.
Just not enough to make believers out of folks like ESPN’s Paul Finebaum, the self-proclaimed “Mouth of the South” and noted Harbaugh critic.
“I give the Michigan program a lot of credit,” Finebaum said recently, adding he’d also give Harbaugh the nod for national coach of the year. “But I just don’t think they’re quite ready for what they’re going to get into with this Georgia defense.”
And even if they are, he added, “I don’t think they can handle Alabama, either.”
The oddsmakers in Las Vegas think the general public will agree, with projected lines favoring Alabama by nearly a touchdown over Michigan if both teams were to advance to the Jan. 10 title game in Indianapolis.
Yet that's where Desmond Howard, the ESPN analyst who won a Heisman Trophy playing for Michigan, jumps into the debate, such that it is.
“To me, it’s not really SEC domination,” he said. “It’s more Alabama domination. But that’s just my perspective. I can’t tell you how other people who may think it’s ‘SEC domination’ will view it. But even if Michigan wins tomorrow, you’ve still got Alabama over there hovering. And Alabama’s the defending national champ.
“I know people are really excited about Georgia because they were undefeated until they played Alabama. But that’s the point: They were undefeated until they played Alabama. Alabama is still that team.“
Michigan, meanwhile, is still an interloper, much as Michigan State was back in 2015, when the Spartans earned a playoff bid and then got trounced, .
So are the undefeated Cincinnati Bearcats, who'll take on Alabama, which has won five of the last 10 national titles under Nick Saban, in the Cotton Bowl.
“But it’s kind of cool to me that you’ve got Michigan, unranked (to start the season), in this thing,” Pollack said. “You’ve got Cincinnati, who hasn’t been in the College Football Playoff before. And there’s Georgia, who has only been in it once. So I think it’s kind of cool that you’ve got a bunch of new blood, a bunch of new flavor, instead of the same teams we’ve had year in and year out.
“So I don’t put Big Ten-SEC, all that stuff, on the line in this game. But I think it’s fun that we’ve had an infusion of talent into the college football playoff.”
It’s also fun to think of the arguments the underdogs might spark. One win probably won’t change a thing. But two just might.
