Stop the SEC Bias in the AP Poll

The SEC is a great football conference. No one is denying that. But the most recent AP Poll shows that the national conversation around the conference has gone too far.

Look no further than how the voters treated No. 17 Mississippi State’s loss compared to No. 20 Iowa’s loss. The Bulldogs lost 56-23 at home to No. 6 Alabama, but fell just one spot.

The Hawkeyes entered Saturday in a similar environment, hosting No. 5 Ohio State. The Buckeyes won 31-14, and Iowa dropped six spots in the poll.

Similar results, very different reactions. Neither game was particularly close, but Iowa lost a closer matchup to a higher ranked team and was punished more. Mississippi State’s wins over No. 14 Missouri and Minnesota are more impressive, but the Hawkeyes’ victories over Michigan and Iowa State are nothing to scoff at either.

No. 22 UCLA and Nebraska are each undefeated, and although their schedules are not particularly strong yet, both have taken care of business as much as you could ask. It is not hard to imagine SEC teams with a similar resume receiving much more benefit of the doubt.

Nebraska not being ranked yet is not offensive on the surface. No. 25 Pittsburgh is also undefeated, and had to wait until Sunday after beating Virginia Tech to land a spot in the AP Poll. The problem is that the standard is not applied equally.

SEC teams start in the pole position. Everyone else has to earn it. 

Ironically, the first team out of the poll this week is Kentucky. Will Stein’s Wildcats have been a fun story so far this season, upsetting Texas A&M and looking much improved from last year. However, that win over the Aggies no longer holds as much weight, and a narrow win over South Carolina on Saturday was not enough to keep Kentucky in the poll.

Other teams knocking on the door of the top 25 have much cleaner resumes. Wake Forest just beat Stanford 57-3, has a win over Louisville, a non-conference win over Purdue and its only loss is a 13-point defeat to No. 4 Miami. 

Northwestern is 3-1 with dominant wins over Penn State and Colorado, with its only loss coming against Indiana on the road in a one-score battle.

When SEC programs like Mississippi State, Florida or Ole Miss lose in a blowout, the team that beat them gets rewarded with a ranking boost, while they suffer a minor drop. Everyone else has a much smaller margin for error, with Northwestern, Wisconsin and Arizona all sitting outside the rankings with losses only coming against top-10 teams.

In isolation, this week’s AP rankings are individually defensible. When evaluated together, however, they reveal an undeniable trend that favors one conference above the others. 

This is not a call to drop this tier of SEC teams out of the rankings entirely, simply a request to evaluate everyone with the same scrutiny.