James Franklin breaks down strength of Big Ten, SEC amid conference expansion

The SEC and Big Ten are dominating college football through the first two weeks, which isn’t a surprise to Penn State coach James Franklin. The two conferences combine to make up 16 of the 25 teams currently ranked in the AP poll, as well as nine of the top 10 teams.

Conference realignment has played a large role in this as four of the 16 ranked teams are in their first season in the Big Ten or SEC. With his Nittany Lions sitting at No. 10, Franklin spoke on the strength of both league in his Monday press conference.

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“I would say that everybody probably anticipated that with the growth of the SEC and the growth of the Big Ten,” the coach said. “Not just the growth in numbers, but the type of programs that were joining both conferences. I think everybody in the country was expecting that the Big Ten and SEC would be in a position to be dominant. The challenge that you’re gonna have with that, which I think is what the commissioners were working on, is you’re also gonna to to the point where all of the games are gonna be SEC vs. SEC and Big Ten vs. Big Ten. Where does that leave you? Because you’re playing really good teams week in and week out.”

Penn State has one more nonconference game in Week 4 before it opens up Big Ten play. The conference slate will be even more challenging than it has in the past as USC, UCLA and Washington are all part of the schedule.

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Franklin is most interested to see how things play out over the next few months and how the strength of schedule for Big Ten and SEC teams affects their College Football Playoff chances. Of course, five conference championship will receive automatic bids under the new 12-team format this season.

But outside of that, he believes the remaining seven at-large bids could be mostly from those two conferences.

“I think that’s where a lot of this discussion upset a lot of people about the number of Big Ten and SEC teams getting into the playoffs,” he said. “Our scheduling looks very different than most other conferences for what you just mentioned. The number of ranked teams in our conferences, we’re gonna get to the point where we’re just gonna be playing each other.

“…At this point in the season, it’s probably about what most people anticipated. We just want to make sure that later in the season, you can make an argument for some SEC and Big Ten teams with multiple losses maybe getting in the playoffs over some conferences with single losses just based on the strength of both conferences.”