The SEC has spent much of the 2024 college football season beating up on each other, with all but one of the 16 teams in the newly expanded 16-team conference nursing at least two losses.
For the College Football Playoff, that could present some issues, particularly for teams who may enter the SEC championship game with two losses — and fear that a third defeat would knock them from playoff consideration.
It’s a concern that looms entering the final weeks of the regular season and one that playoff selection committee chair Warde Manuel addressed Tuesday night after the third set of playoff rankings were revealed.
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“We’re not going to speculate on what will happen, but we have a lot of value for the teams that make a championship game,” Manuel said in an interview with ESPN’s Rece Davis. “That says a lot, playing 12 games in a season. Making your championship game is a really valuable data point.”
On Monday, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin verbalized what’s becoming an increasingly common sentiment that it’s more advantageous for a team to miss its conference title game and avoid tacking on another loss.
“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that, they don’t want to be in it,” Kiffin said.
There is, of course, an upside to making the conference championship game. Not only is it something the committee says will look upon favorably, but also a victory there would hand a team an automatic berth into the playoff. If a squad is one of the four highest-rated conference champions — which the SEC title-holder almost certainly would be — then it would earn a first-round bye and a spot in the quarterfinals.
The SEC accounted for eight of the committee’s top 25 teams in its newest rankings, including six of the top 15. Things are particularly jumbled from No. 7 to No. 15, a range that features five SEC teams, each of which has two losses — No. 7 Alabama, No. 9 Ole Miss, No. 10 Georgia, No. 11 Tennessee and No. 15 Texas A&M.
Texas, the conference’s lone member with fewer than two losses, is No. 3.
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It’s quite possible that even the Longhorns don’t escape the regular season with just a single loss, as they have to face Texas A&M on the road on Nov. 30 in the first meeting between the longtime rivals since 2011.
Though it may not ultimately mean much, anxious SEC teams at least have a reassurance from Manuel that finishing in the top two of the league standings and making it to Atlanta for the SEC championship game is something that will be valued.
“We’re going to evaluate the games and how teams play and the performance on the field,” said Manuel, who also serves as Michigan’s athletic director. “That’s what the commissioners have asked us to do. They didn’t ask us to stop right before the championship game, they asked us to rank the teams through the championship game. And I think you can see over the years how the committee has valued those championship games, and who stays in, and where they’re ranked.
“But we’re not going to speculate. We’re going to let the season play out. But I think teams that make that championship game, the committee looks at them and puts them in high esteem.”
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: CFP chair Warde Manuel: Playoff values teams to make conference title
