There’s been a lot of talk about Clemson football’s strength of schedule and how the Tigers have the easiest path to the CFB Playoff.
Despite the fact that Clemson football proved to be the best team in the nation in 2018, analysts and fans alike still attempt to doubt the Tigers.
We gave you our take last week on what we think about the whole SEC schedule bias and how that’s bogus.
For short: You can’t say that Alabama had a grueling schedule in the SEC when the Crimson Tide won their conference games by a combined 29.8 points per game last season. The starters were well-rested and the Crimson Tide just ran into a Clemson football team that was better than them and more prepared.
Moving on from that argument, though, there’s another dangerous facet of this argument.
When you have ESPN and the SEC Network brainwashing the public and making them think that the SEC is so much better than every other conference, it can potentially damage Clemson. I’m not saying that the ACC is the best conference in America, but it’s also not as bad as SEC fans think it is.
The ACC had a bad year last year, but there have also been seasons in the past where the conference could’ve been the best in America, legitimately.
The truth is that there’s not a big difference between the five Power-Five conferences. The SEC isn’t the monster that it used to be. The Big Ten has a couple of solid teams, but the vast majority of those programs don’t have the speed to compete with elite programs.
The Big 12 has no defense. The Pac-12 is probably the worst conference from top-to-bottom out of the Power-Five. The truth is that every conference has its flaws and you only choose to look at the ones that don’t affect you.
The dangerous facet of this argument, though, is that ESPN and SEC Network analysts would be quick to eliminate Clemson from CFB Playoff conversations if the Tigers dropped one single game. They’d be advocating for a 10-2 Georgia team, for example, to get in over an 11-1 Clemson team.
That’s the danger here.
Brainwashing people, including the CFB Playoff committee, leads to a slant in how we view teams. There should really never be a 10-2 team from any conference that gets in over a conference champion with one loss in another conference. That’s the danger of a four-team field, but it’s something that Clemson will have to deal with if the Tigers lose focus for one week in the 2019 season.
Hopefully, Clemson shows up every week and gets through the regular season unscathed, and maybe it’s a moot point, but I still think it’s worth pointing out.