Heather Dinich explains why wide-open College Football Playoff field isn't an indictment on SEC

As the college football season quickly progresses to the part of the year where weekly College Football Playoff rankings come out, much discussion is about the quality of the SEC this fall.

The league hasn’t put together a particularly good track record in non-conference play this fall, leading many to wonder if the SEC might not carry the traditional sway with the CFP selection committee come crunch time.

For ESPN analyst Heather Dinich, it’s more about what other leagues are doing than what the SEC isn’t.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily an indictment on the SEC as much as it is a, ‘Hey, congratulations and welcome back,'” Dinich said Wednesday on the Paul Finebaum Show. “We’re talking about Florida State. We’re talking about Texas. We’re talking about USC. To me it goes back to the earlier point of just a much broader field.”

With more teams vying for the few College Football Playoff spots in the final year of the four-team format, resumes will be as important as ever.

Currently the SEC has three unbeaten teams in Georgia, Kentucky and Missouri. The Bulldogs, of course, are one of the favorites to remain that way, while the Wildcats and Tigers continuing to stack wins to that extent would be a bit more surprising.

In any case, the number of teams from other leagues who can make a College Football Playoff case shouldn’t necessarily keep the SEC out.

“That doesn’t change the fact that the SEC champion is going to have arguably one of the best shots in the country at finishing in the top four,” Dinich said.

But what happens in the event that Georgia drops a game, or programs that already have a loss like Alabama or Ole Miss drop a second game?

With such a deep field, that might be a death knell for playoff chances this fall.

“Now a two-loss team has never gotten into the College Football Playoff,” Dinich said. “That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But I think it’s just a matter of other teams having contenders and the Pac-12 being as deep as it is with so many talented quarterbacks, and in the Big Ten you’ve got at least three teams in Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan that can make some noise. Then you throw Florida State into the mix and it’s just not; the SEC isn’t the answer, it’s a bigger question this year.”