quote:
Not going to say that the SEC was ever irrelevant... but those early SEC team championships are a bit suspect.

Vandy in 1906 lost a game. Auburn in 1910 lost a game. Ga Tech in 1916 tied a game. LSU in 1908, A&M in 1919 and Bama in 1925 were all undefeated.

HOWEVER

During that era...

TEXAS Went undefeated in 1914, 1918, and had just a tie in 1920 and 1923.

They had one loss teams in 1912, and 1913.

OKLAHOMA was undefeated in 1911, 1915, 1918 and in 1920 had one tie.

Nebraska was also undefeated in 1915 and a lot of Husker fans claim a title for that year.

So it is evident that this teams peformed just as well as your SEC teams did during that period... they just weren't awarded championships despite having these great teams.

If you look at period from 1950 to 2005... you can take the Big 8/12 and add Texas (as a 9th team)

The Big 8 and Texas had fifteen National Championships compared to the SEC's twelve.

That immediately changed in 2006 to the present... but for that 45 years... there were other conferences that were equal to the SEC.,..

The Big 8 might have been the best conference in the country (at the top) in the early 1970s. In 1971 the Big 8 finished 1,2,3 in the country and obliterated the top two SEC team in bowl games during the process.

Great point. I would also point out that in the 1930s, the National Champion was picked before the bowl games. So, the 1939 Texas A&M team was picked over a Tennessee team that was the last college football team to complete a regular season without giving up a single point.

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Posted by Gunga Din

Oklahoma

Member since Jul 2020

3347 posts

Posted on 3/11/26 at 7:34 am to madmaxvol

quote:
Great point. I would also point out that in the 1930s, the National Champion was picked before the bowl games. So, the 1939 Texas A&M team was picked over a Tennessee team that was the last college football team to complete a regular season without giving up a single point.

Absolutely... Tennessee's 1938 team as well. they throttled OU's best ever team in the Orange Bowl that year.

The SEC has had some years where they had teams really get screwed in the polls... Those two Tennessee teams, Ole Miss in 1962, Arkansas in 1964 and Bama in 1966...all those teams were deserving of championships.

And a few others... like Tennessee and Kentucky in 1950 for instance... were equally deserving.

Just pointing out that those early day Texas and Oklahoma teams were kind of "too frontier" to get the respect of the eastern press as being legitimate teams compared to teams in other parts of the country. Kind of surprised that that 1919 A&M team was considered national championship worthy.

I will say that a lot of Nebraska fans think their 1915 team deserved the national championship as they beat Notre Dame that season giving the Irish their only loss that season.

I think the thing about the SEC/Southern Conference is that they were always just as good as anybody else and sometimes the beast league before they became the beast that they have been for the last 20 years.

This post was edited on 3/11/26 at 7:38 am

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