From Sports editor of the Toledo Blade, Dave Briggs:

https://www.toledoblade.com/sports/ohio-state/2025/01/02/briggs-ohio-sta...

Briggs: Ohio State has opportunity to send criminally overrated SEC into full-blown identity crisis
DAVID BRIGGS.
The Blade
dbriggs@theblade.com
 
"At the Cotton Bowl next week, the Buckeyes will not only have the chance to continue on toward a national title. 

They have the opportunity to send the south into a full-blown state of football mourning.

No wonder you can’t spell identity crisis without S-E-C.

You just hate to see it!

Now, we’re having a little fun here, and you can argue bowl results — especially in this turnstile era — are not a good measure of conference supremacy. (Everyone knows they only count when the SEC wins.)

Let us also roll our eyes at the fictive narrative that the SEC is a media creation. It counts 13 of the past 18 national champions and produces mountains of NFL draft picks. Its reputation as the best conference is earned.

But nothing lasts forever.

While I hesitate to let facts get in the way, I might remind that two current Big Ten teams played for the national title last year — Michigan beat Washington — and there’s a good chance we’ll see it again this season. 

It’s time for the south — and those fighting its football war — to stop living in the past.

You can argue the reasons for the flattening of the football earth, and, no, it’s not as simple as everyone can pay players now. Spare us the Big Ten sanctimony.

Inarguable are the results..."

(Mod Edit: Did a severe deletion of the article for content and to keep in line with the Commenting Policy under the Respect Sources clause.)