Joel Klatt: ‘Narrative that SEC is clearly the best conference is dead’

The SEC didn’t have the success that many expected it to during the first 12-team College Football Playoff.

Three teams made the initial field with Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, the 2024 SEC Champion. Only Texas remains alive in their quest to win the national championship. Neither Tennessee nor Georgia won a game during the playoffs, drawing criticism from many on social media.

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“The narrative that the SEC is so clearly head and shoulders above everybody all the time is dead and it needs to die based on the evidence in front of our eyes,” Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt said. “Now that doesn’t mean that they won’t have the most guys drafted in the NFL Draft. It doesn’t mean that they’re not a great conference. They are a great conference and they’re probably the deepest conference this year.

“However, this idea of vast superiority needs to die based on the evidence, not narrative. Evidence. As we move forward, hopefully, that’s the case.”

Klatt reiterated that the SEC limped its way into the national semifinal. He said Texas got “fortunate” to not get called for targeting late in the fourth quarter, which would have put Arizona State on the Longhorns’ side of the field during the final minutes of regulation.

The Sun Devils had already come back from a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit to tie the game and were looking to take the lead. Ultimately, Texas emerged victorious in double overtime to advance forward in the College Football Playoff.

“Arizona State, man, they had a chance to really win that game,” Klatt said. “They had a chance right there. If the targeting goes their way, which, by rule, it should have and then they had a chance of 4th & 13.

“Credit Texas for the way they executed. [Quinn] Ewers executed. But Texas barely gets into the national semifinal. And if you were sitting here 5-6, years ago and saying the SEC is barely going to get into the Final Four in the first year of a 12-team playoff everyone would have thought you were crazy. That narrative is slowly dying.”

Texas still has the chance to give the SEC another national championship, but will have to go through Ohio State in the national semifinal before they can set their eyes on the College Football Playoff national championship.