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The SEC and Big Ten are constantly competing to see who can be the more dominant conference in the college football landscape. Media days in the South are just another opportunity to take shots at the rivals in the Midwest.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz understood the assignment when he was asked why he believed the Big Ten has been able to claim the last three consecutive national titles. But while he deserves credit for message discipline, his answer was laughable at best.
"When you don't play a [non-conference] A4 game," he chirped to reporters, insinuating that the Big Ten's non-conference scheduling is inferior to the SEC and, therefore, keeps its teams fresher for the postseason. Give us a break, man.
Missouri's 2025 non-conference schedule featured juggernauts like Central Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana and UMass. To Drinkwitz's credit, his program did face a Power Four program, whereas eventual champion Indiana had a cake walk of Kennesaw State, Old Dominion and Indiana State to kick off its historic 16-0 campaign. Still, this argument hardly holds water.
SEC-Big Ten schedule war is grounded in hypocritical arguments
This fight is not going to end any time soon, despite the SEC moving to a nine-game conference slate to match that of the Big Ten. But neither conference is going to get the advantage it thinks it will over the other by virtue playing more games against ostensible peers.
The SEC will complain that it now has greater opportunities to lose an additional game — and, therefore, hurt its chances of securing as many bids as possible to the 12-team (and soon, potentially, 24-team) College Football Playoff. Newsflash: Clearly nobody cared that Big Ten teams play three nobodies to start the year before being rewarded with postseason berths after surviving tough intra-conference battles in October. The problem was always seeing an Alabama or a Georgia get a de-facto bye week in November for playing a fourth non-conference foe that barely qualifies as Division I competition.
In fact, the SEC should be happy it will have contests that will keep teams on their toes in November, as the conference seems to always fall flat on its face come the postseason. Playing three cupcakes didn't prevent Indiana from pasting Alabama on New Year's Day, nor did an extra Power Four game keep the SEC from going 4-10 last season between bowl and Playoff games.
SEC-Big Ten scheduling fight can be settled with one easy solution
Yet, the Big Ten is not free from criticism in this argument either. Sure, it had an expanded conference slate, but when that extra game comes against a team like Purdue, it's hard to take seriously. The easy solution to getting a true leg up on the SEC would be consistently scheduling a Power Four non-conference game early in the year. In fact, challenge the SEC upfront by wanting to see, for example, Minnesota face Missouri in Week 2 or Illinois take on South Carolina in Week 3.
That kind of move would strengthen both conference's resumes regardless of result. If Alabama faces the Gamecocks in that scenario, the strength of opponent will be higher than if South Carolina only faced teams like Kent State and Towson early on. The inverse would apply to Ohio State when facing the Golden Gophers.
Would a potential additional loss be undesirable for Playoff purposes? Absolutely. But there's no way the selection committee would punish an SEC or Big Ten team in the same way for losing in those early non-conference games than it would for struggling to beat a nobody like Austin Peay (which Georgia only managed a 28-6 win over last year).
Of course, the Big Ten will laugh at that kind of proposal, and the SEC will clutch its pearls, both preferring to stick to the safest possible avenue to multi-team bids in the CFP. The biggest losers going forward, beyond the fans, would be the Big 12 and ACC. The longer they get treated as junior varsity leagues with only one or two bids to the tournament, the more likely any future scheduled non-conference games with Big Ten or SEC schools will get canceled (LSU is the latest, backing out of a series with Arizona State).
They won't get over themselves. It'll never happen. But the quicker fans realize this battle is no more than posturing and peacocking, the easier it'll be to convince those conferences they aren't fooling anybody.
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This article was originally published on fansided.com as Why the SEC-Big Ten scheduling war is built on hypocrisy.
