If the performance of SEC teams in the bowl season is any indication, the conference long considered to be the flag bearer at the Power Four level of college football may be losing its grip on the top spot.
The SEC sent 11 teams to postseason play this season, including a record five to the College Football Playoff. Yet, the conference has just one playoff team still in the championship hunt in Ole Miss and four total postseason wins, along with nine losses, to show for it.
Of the 11 SEC teams that made it into the postseason, only Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas managed to come out a winner in postseason bowl action, and Ole Miss, after losing head coach Lane Kiffin to LSU, has recorded two of the conference's four wins, moving on to play No. 10 Miami on Thursday in one of the two CFP semifinal games.
SEC has suffered nine losses in 13 postseason games
These eight SEC postseason teams lost in their one and only 2025 postseason appearance:
No. 8 Oklahoma to No. 9 Alabama, 34-24 (CFP)
No. 7 Texas A&M to No. 10 Miami, 10-3 (CFP)
No. 3 Georgia to No. 6 Ole Miss, 39-34 (CFP)
Missouri to No. 19 Virginia, 13-7 (Gator Bowl)
LSU to No. 21 Houston, 38-35 (Texas Bowl)
Tennessee to Illinois, 30-28 (Music City Bowl)
No. 14 Vanderbilt to No. 23 Iowa, 34-27 (ReliaQuest Bowl)
Mississippi State to Wake Forest, 43-29 (Duke's Mayo Bowl)
The Big Ten, on the other hand, considered the SEC's strongest challenger in the "best conference" debate, placed three teams in the College Football Playoff, including the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5 seeds, and still has two teams (No. 1 Indiana and No. 5 Oregon) among the last four standing. The Big Ten has compiled an overall 9-4 bowl record this season, the best of any conference. Moreover, the Big Ten's 9-4 record is in stark contrast to the SEC's feeble 4-9 mark.
The past two national champions have come from the Big Ten with Michigan in 2023 and Ohio State in 2024, and there is a good chance that a third different team from that conference could be crowned again this season. Not only have the past two national champions not come from the SEC, but an SEC team hasn't made it to the national championship game in either of the past two seasons.
That, coupled with the embarrassing SEC postseason results from a conference that placed seven teams in the final College Football Playoff rankings and eight teams in the final Associated Press Top 25, begs the question of whether the SEC still has a legitimate claim to superiority as the best football conference.
FOX Sports' Colin Cowherd was convinced even before the 2025 season began that there was a power shift in college football and that the Big Ten was now the premier conference. The landscape is changing, Cowherd said this past fall on his FOX Sports weekday program "The Herd with Colin Cowherd," and what's changed it is money. He pointed out that Big Ten schools are bigger, have more graduates and it's easier to raise money for NIL.
According to a recent article by Morgan Moriarty of The Sporting News, three Big Ten schools ranked in the top eight of NIL money raised by the top schools in that category, including Nos. 1 and 2, Ohio State and Oregon. Three SEC schools also were listed in this grouping (No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 6 Georgia and No. 7 Alabama), but further down in the ranking.
"Big Ten money is Hollywood, tech and financial centers," Cowherd jested then. "There's a lot of car dealerships in the SEC."
I wouldn't go quite that far, but the playing field in college football is clearly changing, and I agree with Cowherd that the money being offered and paid to student-athletes is the driving force, along with the opportunity to utilize the Transfer Portal as a means to test the market and potentially earn even more elsewhere.
These changes are leveling the playing field, and the Power Four conferences and schools are taking full advantage of it. Let's face it, the schools in the SEC and the Big Ten are always going to be at the center of it, lesser so because of size and revenue producing ability of the Big 12 and the ACC.
While the Big Ten has shown its might on the national stage in college football the past couple of years, there's no denying that from an historical perspective, the SEC's sustained record of success over the past 25 years -- and at the highest levels of the sport -- is unmatched.
Since 2000, 23 current members of the SEC have participated in a national championship game, including 15 of which have been crowned national champions. Over that same period, 10 teams from the current Big Ten have been one of the final two teams competing for the national title with five being crowned national champions.
There are multiple measurement variables that could be used in the process of determining which Power Four conference is the so-called "strongest" or "best" in college football. One is certainly national championships and/or College Football Playoff appearances. Another is postseason bowl results, which is the central theme of this article. A third is season records.
Although the 2025 SEC bowl results wreaked of underachievement, the overall conference standings told a different story. Seven SEC teams, including Oklahoma, won at least 10 games this season and 10 of the 16 teams in the conference finished with winning records. By comparison, three teams from the Big Ten won 10 or more games, with four more finishing with nine overall wins. The Big Ten matched the SEC with six teams with losing records.
The debate goes on... But anyway you choose to measure it, there is one thing we can all agree on: The SEC and Big Ten are clearly head and shoulders above the rest.