It seems like next year is set up perfectly to give the SEC its seventh straight championship — three of the teams (Alabama, Arkansas, and LSU) likely to make the preseason top five will come from the same division within the SEC. While all three teams find themselves there right now, and the fact that they had to face each other didn't hurt them this year, it likely will next year.
To begin with, the SEC looks like it will be better top-to-bottom next year, with teams like Auburn and Florida likely to bounce back into a position of consistent top-25 caliber play. So the likelihood of two or more teams making it to the end of the marathon that is the SEC conference schedule with less than two losses on the season is extremely low. I actually wouldn't be surprised if the winner of the SEC West went 11-2 next year, a mark which earned Arkansas third place in the same division this year.
With that in mind, begin to consider some teams like USC, Oklahoma State, Oregon, and many others that are good and getting better, and all of whom face a considerably easier path to a one or two loss season. All of them also play in BCS conferences, meaning a one-loss year would likely put them in the championship game over a two-loss SEC school.
Now the BCS waters are even more muddied than usual, especially considering the fact that there have been some doubts raised publicly by former or event current BCS proponents about if the current method is the best one. So we get to the third and final reason for an easier path than ever to the championship game for a non-SEC school.
The final reason is that with all the doubts currently floating around about the BCS and its method of determining a champion, the powers-that-be might feel pressure to put in a non-SEC school in, as an attempt to stem the tide of the overwhelming sentiment that the BCS unfairly tips the scales in favor of SEC schools. At the end of the day, it won't matter whether or not the voters think the schools outside the BCS are better — because if they're going to make money off of the current system in the long run, they'll do everything they can to preserve it.
Even the casual viewer could notice that this year, more than any year in quite some time, there were many teams from other BCS conferences that probably could have at least given the national champion (Alabama) more of a game than the SEC runner-up (LSU) did in the national championship. The college football playoff proponents have more ammo for their argument now than they ever have, and if they make enough noise in the coming weeks, change just might be on the horizon.
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