By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

On Tuesday night, the latest installment of the College Football Playoff rankings were released.

There weren’t too many surprises. LSU topped the chart after an historic win over Alabama. Ohio State continues to churn along and the defending champions from Clemson won’t drop out of a coveted top-4 so long as they remain undefeated.

The only small surprise was that Alabama fell all the way out of the top-4, coming in at No. 5 while Georgia claimed the final spot – for now – in the ultimate playoff.

There is still a month to play in the regular season and history suggests that a big shakeup or two are still in store, but the latest rankings continued a long-running trend.

For more than a decade it has been pretty much impossible for Southeastern Conference teams to not make up a large portion of any poll.

To be fair, there is no reason to be surprised by seeing SEC teams ranked near the top. The conference won seven consecutive national championships from 2006-12 and has won two more since then. A team from the SEC was also the runner-up in three other title games since 2012.

It’s inarguable that the SEC routinely produces some of the best teams each year. But a quick look at how the rankings – both the playoff rankings and the Associated Press poll – play out each week shows why the league is all but guaranteed to get a crack at the title, even in down years.

The fact that the thousands of bowl game fans doing the ‘S-E-C’ chant don’t want to admit is that, for all the greatness of the top few teams each season, the bottom of the league features bad teams the likes of which can be found in any other conference. But the real issue with the SEC and the rankings comes from the 4-5 teams in the middle of the conference standings.

Year in and year out, ranked SEC teams that suffer tough losses never seem to suffer the same sort of hit in the polls as similar middling teams from other leagues.

As an example, from the most recent playoff rankings, Florida and Auburn are the two highest ranked two-loss teams and both come in ahead of undefeated P5 school Baylor, as well as five other teams with just one loss.

The constant argument is that the SEC is just so much better that its teams play exponentially tougher schedules and deserve the benefit of a doubt.

That’s simply not true in practice. Alabama has yet to beat a ranked team this season and only has one left on its schedule.

Auburn has only beaten one ranked team this season in Oregon. Florida’s only win over a ranked team came when it beat Auburn.

That’s the vicious circle which continues to play out in the SEC’s favor. Anytime a favorite wins, like it should against a league doormat, it gets extra credit for winning an SEC game.

When a favorite loses, the blow in the rankings is softened for the same reason. And anytime an otherwise unimpressive SEC team jumps up to beat a league rival, the voters overreact and race to throw that team right into a top-20 spot.

And that’s how the league continues to take up nearly a third of each new poll despite not being nearly the dominant force it was a decade ago.

The top few teams in the SEC are great and have a legitimate shot at a national championship each season. But all of their lesser friends need to stop sucking up all the air in the rankings that could be used on better teams from other conferences.