While the theories of SEC speed and SEC bias are highly-contentious matters, less debatable is the conference’s dominion over the college football world.
"I'm not quite sure what the SEC bias is,” Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said earlier this month, “(but) hard-pressed not to say it's not the best league top to bottom."
Indeed, winners of seven of the eight last national championships, the SEC is the sport’s premier conference. And in three weeks, the Buckeyes will face powerhouse and top-ranked Alabama, which has claimed three titles in five years, in the Sugar Bowl as part of the College Football playoff semifinals.
That, coupled with Ohio State’s 0-9 record in bowl games against the league (a 2011 win against Arkansas was vacated due to NCAA sanctions), is much of why Meyer and Co. will enter the festivities in New Orleans as underdogs. The current spread is 9.5 points.
It’s also why national pundits and analysts are picking the Crimson Tide to roll the Buckeyes, whose historical struggles against the league have resuscitated what seems to have become a conversation that’s as overblown as it is emotional: Can Ohio State compete an SEC team? Is it fast enough to do so?
“You can flip on the film and make that decision for yourself,” said junior linebacker Joshua Perry.
“I hate that question because we recruit fast guys. We can play sideline to sideline, so just take a look and see. We can just put on game film from this year and look at either team and you could see that both of us can run.
SEC this, SEC that. Ohio State’s players hold the notion of an inferiority complex in contempt.
“What exactly is SEC speed? I think we have great speed on our team,” said sophomore running back Ezekiel Elliott.
“I’m not sold on the whole SEC speed thing, because we’ve got teams in the Big Ten that are talented and have players who are really speedy,” safety Tyivs Powell said.
“What is SEC-caliber, really? Big Ten-caliber, how about that?” said sophomore defensive end Joey Bosa.
Though teams in the conference have recruited well and stockpiled talent in recent years, there is no empirical evidence to suggest the SEC has decidedly bigger, faster, stronger athletes than its Power Five counterparts and, in this case, particularly those to the north.
“We’ve got a bunch of fast guys just like they’ve got a bunch of fast guys, Powell said. “I don’t think that the speed thing should be that big of a deal because I think we can match their speed pretty well.”
But a perception (fair or not) of inferiority remains. Beating Alabama could significantly change such thinking or dismiss it entirely.
“It is definitely a game where a statement will be made,” Elliott said. “The Big Ten is looked at as one of the weaker conferences and the SEC is one of the most dominant ones, we have a lot to prove in this game.”
Added Powell: The Crimson Tide have “been winning national championships. They’ve been there, and they’ve done this so many years in a row that they kind of know what to do.
“It’s up to us to come out there and match their intensity, be more physical and show that the SEC speed isn’t really different and that football is football.”
