Former Alabama running back and Heisman winner Mark Ingram shared the hard truth about the Southeastern Conference on Wednesday.
“Hey man, it’s life in the SEC,” Ingram said while breaking down the last college football playoff rankings. “We talked about it, man, how the conference was just going to cannibalize itself. And it has. But that’s just the world that that conference lives in right now.”
Ingram’s comments about the brutality of the SEC schedule came during Wednesday’s episode of The Triple Option Podcast alongside hosts Rod Stone and coach Urban Meyer.
The college football committee placed a quartet of two-loss SEC teams within five spots of each other in the latest rankings update with Tennessee trailing the bunch. Tennessee’s placement behind Alabama, Ole Miss, and Georgia also put the Vols as the “first team out” in the latest playoff projection.
Ingram’s statement points to the fact that while the SEC has some of the best wins across the entire college football landscape this season, all of those great wins are against each other. Tennessee beat Alabama, Alabama beat Georgia, Georgia beat Tennessee, and Ole Miss beat Georgia. Yes, those are all great wins for all four teams, but it’s also challenges that other conferences don’t necessarily have to face on a consistent basis.
The tough schedule gives SEC teams more opportunities to get good wins throughout a season but also opens them up to more competition. Nothing wrong with that, but it does go back to Ingram’s stance that it is the way it is and these teams just have to navigate those cloudy waters.
“Everyone wants to hate on us, the SEC they get this, they cry about this, they cry about that,” Ingram continued on to say, mocking the anti-SEC fans. “But it’s the true story! I mean, you got what, five, six two-loss teams in the SEC right now? It’s ugly.”
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The SEC’s round-robin wins also present ranking challenges, too. The committee has the tough job of ranking these four teams based on their best wins but doesn’t (and can’t) always go by the head-to-head wins. That’s what has Tennessee fans frustrated this week.
Alabama is ahead of Georgia because the Crimson Tide have the head-to-head win. Ole Miss is ahead of Georgia because the Rebels have the head-to-head win. Georgia is ahead of Tennessee because the Bulldogs have the head-to-head win. But Tennessee is ranked four spots behind Alabama who they beat in October?
It’s not an enviable task to place these teams but Mark Ingram told the truth.
Check out the segment from The Triple Option Podcast below:
