College Football Finally Finds Parity
With new teams in the Top-10, the NCAA football field is as competitive as ever
Halfway through the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football season, you can color me surprised if you have heard this before: The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is the class of the field. Georgia and Alabama have reigned supreme above the rest of the country this season, even with Alabama getting upset by Texas A&M last weekend 41-38 in College Station.
This season has been as good as 2007, where a 2-loss LSU team overcame the odds several times to win the title in the now defunct BCS Championship format. All the parity from fourteen years ago is coming back to the light this season and is showing no signs of slowing down as championship season nears. Every conference in the country has attempted to compete with the SEC this year, and so far, every single one has faltered, with former #3 Oregon falling flat in an upset loss against Stanford and sabotaging the PAC-12’s chances of competing in the College Football Playoff. Furthermore, with #5 Oklahoma having repeated mediocre showings against mid-tier teams, the reputation and confidence in the Big 12 conference is quickly depleting. Couple that with the fact that programs like Clemson, Ohio State, and USC have not been their usual prolific selves, and the fate of the College Football playoff race is definitely up in the air.
Continuing with the theme of parity this season, teams like Cincinnati and Iowa have taken full advantage of this season’s chaos, catapulting to number #2 and #3 respectively in the country, according to the weekly Associated Press Top 25 Poll. Their current positioning gives each university an opportunity to make the exclusive four-team playoff.
The Big 10 conference usually gets playoff consideration from schools like Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, but this year the conference is Iowa’s to lose. The Hawkeye’s have been lead by their elite defense, having generated 15 interceptions at the halfway point in the regular season and being led by star defensive back Riley Moss with 4 picks. Moss, however, is currently sidelined with a knee injury that will last a few weeks, and it remains to be seen how well Iowa can do without their best defensive player.
A bigger surprise comes with the Cincinnati Bearcats, currently ranked second in the country. The Bearcats' surprising season puts them in position to be the first “Group of Five” representative in the playoff’s history. In college football, the “The Power Five” conferences make up five of the ten conferences in the country, while the other half of football conferences are known as the “Group of Five”, consisting of the American Athletic Conference (AAC), Conference USA, Mid-American Conference (MAC), Sun Belt Conference, and the Mountain West Conference.
Cincinnati is led by prolific redshirt senior quarterback Desmond Ridder and Alabama transfer Jerome Ford at running back. While the Bearcats are not a typical member of playoff conversations, they have taken advantage of their unique schedule, and with a notable road win over Notre Dame, the team has risen towards the top of the standings.
In front of the college football pack, undefeated and ranked #1 overall, is the Georgia Bulldogs. The Bulldogs have been head-and-shoulders above their peers and look to be on path to complete a dominant season. After experiencing quarterback woes in 2019 and 2020 that put their elite defense to waste, Georgia claims they have finally figured it out with USC transfer JT Daniels at the helm. Couple Daniels’ excellence with the Bulldogs’ stifling defense, having given up only two touchdowns through six games, Georgia's success is imminent. Georgia has only given up two total touchdowns through six games, only surrendering a total of 33 total points for an average of a whopping 5.5 points given up per game.
For lesser conferences like the PAC 12, it has been par-for-the-course where all the teams have been beating each other up, leaving no quality teams left to make an impact on the college football playoff. Through the first couple weeks of the season, UCLA looked great -- upending LSU before falling flat against an underdog Fresno State team. Next, it was Oregon who impressively began the first month of their season with a road win in Columbus to upset Ohio State. The Ducks failed to maintain consistency this year, struggling against a winless University of Arizona team, then collapsing against Stanford on Oct. 2 in an overtime loss. The only remaining hope for the Pac 12 is Arizona State, who already has a contentious loss to BYU earlier in the season — further revealing the parity within the conference and the slight fight they have left to send a team to the College Football Playoff.
Despite the lack of bigtime college football schools within the Bay Area, there is undoubtedly plenty of competitive options of good matchups to keep an eye on the rest of the season — Georgia vs Florida, Ohio State vs Michigan, and Oklahoma vs Oklahoma State, to name a few– especially when it comes to college football playoff implications. Every game as we wind down the stretch will have bigger consequences, and you will definitely not want to miss any of it.