The college football season has been in the past for five months now, but that hasn’t stopped fans, coaches, analysts and administrators from discussing how the season ended.
When it comes to the SEC, the one thing that continues to come up in regard to the College Football Playoff this past season is the lack of SEC presence in the playoff. The SEC had three representatives in the 12-team field (25 percent) as Georgia, Texas and Tennessee earned their way in, but many people thought that some more teams from the SEC could have been included.
Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina all had three losses last season, but each team had a legit argument for why they still should have been included in the playoff. For two of those teams (Ole Miss and Alabama), their rationale started and ended with their win over Georgia during the regular season.
The fact that they beat the SEC Champion does deserve some respect when it comes to selecting the 12-team field, but at the end of the day it wasn’t enough to convince the committee to let them in. Many SEC representatives were very upset by this, including commissioner Greg Sankey who recently discussed why these teams should have been included.
Greg Sankey believes Georgia is the gold standard
One would typically expect the commissioner of the SEC to not play favorites out of all the conference teams. And while Sankey didn’t come out and say Georgia is the best, he indirectly showed his hand when discussing why these three teams should have been included in the playoff.
Sankey understands that all of these teams had bad losses, but he believes that Ole Miss and Alabama beating Georgia should trump those bad losses. Whether that’s an accurate way to think or not is up for debate, and people outside of the SEC would likely disagree, but it really doesn’t matter from Georgia’s perspective. Sankey believes that beating Georgia means a team is good enough to get into the playoff, which is a nice compliment for UGA.
As long as Georgia continues to make the playoff then who cares what happens to the other teams in the SEC, but it is quite nice to hear the leader of the SEC talk so highly of Georgia as a program.