Cecil Hurt
TideSports.com Columnist
"Everyone is biased - except me."
That perception isn't new. It has been the basis of self-help books and Harvard dissertations. After all, people may agree on specific issues, maybe most issues, but no two people in the world have the exact same set of experiences and ideas and reactions to every possible situation.
If you want to see where lines in the sand are drawn, though, bring out the tough issues: religion, gender, politics - and, of course, football.
SEC proponents believe the SEC West is far and away the nation's best division. Critics say the lofty reputation and exaggerated with the help of media.
It isn't about the games on the field, necessarily, where a scoreboard reflects a winner and a loser. There is debate even about results, but the real battleground is perception. That is especially true in college football, where the chance to be a champion depends on whether you meet the necessarily subjective criteria of a Selection Committee. A single perception point probably won't tip the balance in favor of your particular team - but it might, and people will argue mightily rather take that chance.
Which brings us to the hottest topic in college football today: SEC Bias.
The phrase is constantly a trending topic on Twitter, a debating point for the ever-increasing army of college football analysts on the television and radio airwaves and has probably been the impetus for a barroom brawl or two along the way.
But what does it mean?
Envy the paranoids
"I envy paranoids. They actually think people care about them." - Susan Sontag
Read the opinions of some Florida State fans, generally confined to Twitter and message boards but recently published in Rolling Stone, of all places, and you get the sense that they think the entire universe (or at least ESPN) is structured to downgrade their program and elevate the SEC. Fans of various Big Ten and Pac-12 and Big 12 teams agree. They parse through matters ranging from "College GameDay" appearances on various campus sites down to the actual adjectives used to describe games ("Why do they say that Alabama had a 'close' win over Arkansas but FSU 'struggled' against North Carolina State?") and find evidence that ESPN programming comes, not from Connecticut but from a grassy knoll located just outside Mike Slive's office window in Birmingham.
They believe the conspiracy is real, even if the motives are vague. ESPN isn't going to make more money if Mississippi State and Arkansas make the college football playoff in a given year. Logic suggests that they would rather have Notre Dame and UCLA, or Ohio State and, at least this year, most certainly FSU. They would certainly make more money. The notion that ESPN somehow works against that, in devious ways, finally prompted "GameDay" host Chris Fowler to break through that program's usual pattern of jocularity leavened by the occasional sentimental Tom Rinaldi feature and go on an actual rant about the balance that ESPN tries to achieve.
But for some reason, the conspiracy theorists would rather argue about why a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback gets more coverage for his off-the-field troubles than a fourth-string tight end at Alabama does. Never mind the huge coverage that also centered on SEC standouts Cam Newton and Johnny Manziel. The answer is, it's a conspiracy.
Laws of physics
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Sir Isaac Newton
Let's be fair about this. The idea of SEC Bias isn't a one-way street. There are plenty of SEC fans - at Alabama, Auburn, LSU and elsewhere - convinced that the SEC's stunning success in the BCS Era has brought about an equally strong Anti-SEC Bias, commonly diagnosed as SEC Fatigue. As usual, that centers on the media as well. Whether it comes from commentators like Rod Gilmore or Joel Klatt, writers like Chris Dufresne or coaches like Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, viewpoints that are not SEC-centric raise hackles and inspire criticism.
And the biggest lightning rod of all, ironically, works at ESPN: Danny Kanell.
The former Florida State quarterback, who appears frequently on ESPN's various platforms, seems to relish his role as the devil's advocate, poking with a pitchfork as what he perceives to be, you guessed it, SEC bias.
"First, my opinions are my own," Kanell said in a phone interview this week. "I have worked at ESPN for five years. I have lived here (in Bristol, Conn., ESPN's corporate home) for three years and never once as anyone said to me, at any level, 'Danny, we want you to say something bad about the SEC.' Never. It doesn't happen.
"Does ESPN want us to have strong opinions? Of course they do. But they want them to be our opinions. I think the idea that we have some kind of corporate script is ridiculous, and I think that is why Chris Fowler finally felt like he had to come out and say something."
Point two, Kanell insists, is that he doesn't "hate" the SEC.
"Not at all," he said. "I think the SEC is the best conference this year, although I don't think the gap between the SEC and the Pac-12 and Big 12 is as wide as some people claim it is."
What Kanell does hate, he says, is intellectual laziness.
"It's when people say 'Oh, the SEC is better than everyone and would beat anyone and that is all there is to it.' That's just lazy. If you ask my definition of SEC bias, that would be it - people making assumptions and not looking any further. I think things started to change last year when the SEC went 0-2 in BCS bowls. They don't just automatically win and it is lazy to just assume they will."
That, Kanell said, is the real bias, if it exists, as opposed to a media conspiracy.
"That (conspiracy) just doesn't make sense," he said. "I argue with FSU people about this all the time. No one is trying to squeeze FSU out. Look at the ratings for the Thursday night game against Louisville. You think any other game would have those numbers? People want to watch FSU, even if they just want to see if someone can beat them."
The other side
"You can't always get what you want/But if you try sometimes, you get what you need." -- Mick Jagger
For Chris Dufresne, the highly respected lead college writer for the Los Angeles Times, the argument about SEC bias was strongest in the latter days of the BCS, when the SEC always managed to place at least one team in the title game. The new College Football Playoff Selection Committee system will place four teams in the national title hunt, and many people - including Kanell - think that the continued debate between conferences may ultimately result in an eight-team playoff down the road.
For now, Dufresne says, four teams is a step in the right direction.
"I think (this system) is better because it's more inclusive," Dufrense said. "There weren't enough teams, and people thought the BCS would always favor the SEC because of perception, wrong or right, that it was created by the SEC, which it was. Roy Kramer and Charles Bloom (the former SEC commissioner and associate commissioner, respectively) came up with it. So the perception was, because of bias in the human polls or scheduling or whatever, is that they were always there.
"Over the BCS years, the Pac-12 had 20 teams in the top six. Oregon and Stanford have always been in the top four or five in recent years but, except for 2010, couldn't get in the top two."
The SEC, Dufresne believes, played to the BCS system.
"They, the SEC, knew how to game the system to their best advantage," Dufresne said. "I give them credit for it, for being ahead of the curve. And in a lot of those years, they were the best conference. But was it frustrating for other conferences? Sure it was."
Whether SEC Bias is real or not, Dufresne said, the only real answer is an eight-team playoff including all the Power 5 conference champions.
"I think eight teams is the best answer," he said. "People say it would dilute the regular season and it is difficult when all leagues don't determine a champion in the same way, with the same number of conference games. But for now I think this way is going well. I did sit in on that mock committee (when media members met in Dallas last month to replicate the Selection Committee process) and you can manipulate it any way you want to get an outcome. But I think what they have done so far is brilliant in terms of team placement."
That doesn't mean everyone will be happy, of course. No one will stop taping "GameDay" and looking for clues. Because while we love college football, we love a good conspiracy theory just as much.
- See more at: https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1701251#sthash.eYHtsVl6.dpuf
TideSports.com Columnist
"Everyone is biased - except me."
That perception isn't new. It has been the basis of self-help books and Harvard dissertations. After all, people may agree on specific issues, maybe most issues, but no two people in the world have the exact same set of experiences and ideas and reactions to every possible situation.
If you want to see where lines in the sand are drawn, though, bring out the tough issues: religion, gender, politics - and, of course, football.
SEC proponents believe the SEC West is far and away the nation's best division. Critics say the lofty reputation and exaggerated with the help of media.
It isn't about the games on the field, necessarily, where a scoreboard reflects a winner and a loser. There is debate even about results, but the real battleground is perception. That is especially true in college football, where the chance to be a champion depends on whether you meet the necessarily subjective criteria of a Selection Committee. A single perception point probably won't tip the balance in favor of your particular team - but it might, and people will argue mightily rather take that chance.
Which brings us to the hottest topic in college football today: SEC Bias.
The phrase is constantly a trending topic on Twitter, a debating point for the ever-increasing army of college football analysts on the television and radio airwaves and has probably been the impetus for a barroom brawl or two along the way.
But what does it mean?
Envy the paranoids
"I envy paranoids. They actually think people care about them." - Susan Sontag
Read the opinions of some Florida State fans, generally confined to Twitter and message boards but recently published in Rolling Stone, of all places, and you get the sense that they think the entire universe (or at least ESPN) is structured to downgrade their program and elevate the SEC. Fans of various Big Ten and Pac-12 and Big 12 teams agree. They parse through matters ranging from "College GameDay" appearances on various campus sites down to the actual adjectives used to describe games ("Why do they say that Alabama had a 'close' win over Arkansas but FSU 'struggled' against North Carolina State?") and find evidence that ESPN programming comes, not from Connecticut but from a grassy knoll located just outside Mike Slive's office window in Birmingham.
They believe the conspiracy is real, even if the motives are vague. ESPN isn't going to make more money if Mississippi State and Arkansas make the college football playoff in a given year. Logic suggests that they would rather have Notre Dame and UCLA, or Ohio State and, at least this year, most certainly FSU. They would certainly make more money. The notion that ESPN somehow works against that, in devious ways, finally prompted "GameDay" host Chris Fowler to break through that program's usual pattern of jocularity leavened by the occasional sentimental Tom Rinaldi feature and go on an actual rant about the balance that ESPN tries to achieve.
But for some reason, the conspiracy theorists would rather argue about why a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback gets more coverage for his off-the-field troubles than a fourth-string tight end at Alabama does. Never mind the huge coverage that also centered on SEC standouts Cam Newton and Johnny Manziel. The answer is, it's a conspiracy.
Laws of physics
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Sir Isaac Newton
Let's be fair about this. The idea of SEC Bias isn't a one-way street. There are plenty of SEC fans - at Alabama, Auburn, LSU and elsewhere - convinced that the SEC's stunning success in the BCS Era has brought about an equally strong Anti-SEC Bias, commonly diagnosed as SEC Fatigue. As usual, that centers on the media as well. Whether it comes from commentators like Rod Gilmore or Joel Klatt, writers like Chris Dufresne or coaches like Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, viewpoints that are not SEC-centric raise hackles and inspire criticism.
And the biggest lightning rod of all, ironically, works at ESPN: Danny Kanell.
The former Florida State quarterback, who appears frequently on ESPN's various platforms, seems to relish his role as the devil's advocate, poking with a pitchfork as what he perceives to be, you guessed it, SEC bias.
"First, my opinions are my own," Kanell said in a phone interview this week. "I have worked at ESPN for five years. I have lived here (in Bristol, Conn., ESPN's corporate home) for three years and never once as anyone said to me, at any level, 'Danny, we want you to say something bad about the SEC.' Never. It doesn't happen.
"Does ESPN want us to have strong opinions? Of course they do. But they want them to be our opinions. I think the idea that we have some kind of corporate script is ridiculous, and I think that is why Chris Fowler finally felt like he had to come out and say something."
Point two, Kanell insists, is that he doesn't "hate" the SEC.
"Not at all," he said. "I think the SEC is the best conference this year, although I don't think the gap between the SEC and the Pac-12 and Big 12 is as wide as some people claim it is."
What Kanell does hate, he says, is intellectual laziness.
"It's when people say 'Oh, the SEC is better than everyone and would beat anyone and that is all there is to it.' That's just lazy. If you ask my definition of SEC bias, that would be it - people making assumptions and not looking any further. I think things started to change last year when the SEC went 0-2 in BCS bowls. They don't just automatically win and it is lazy to just assume they will."
That, Kanell said, is the real bias, if it exists, as opposed to a media conspiracy.
"That (conspiracy) just doesn't make sense," he said. "I argue with FSU people about this all the time. No one is trying to squeeze FSU out. Look at the ratings for the Thursday night game against Louisville. You think any other game would have those numbers? People want to watch FSU, even if they just want to see if someone can beat them."
The other side
"You can't always get what you want/But if you try sometimes, you get what you need." -- Mick Jagger
For Chris Dufresne, the highly respected lead college writer for the Los Angeles Times, the argument about SEC bias was strongest in the latter days of the BCS, when the SEC always managed to place at least one team in the title game. The new College Football Playoff Selection Committee system will place four teams in the national title hunt, and many people - including Kanell - think that the continued debate between conferences may ultimately result in an eight-team playoff down the road.
For now, Dufresne says, four teams is a step in the right direction.
"I think (this system) is better because it's more inclusive," Dufrense said. "There weren't enough teams, and people thought the BCS would always favor the SEC because of perception, wrong or right, that it was created by the SEC, which it was. Roy Kramer and Charles Bloom (the former SEC commissioner and associate commissioner, respectively) came up with it. So the perception was, because of bias in the human polls or scheduling or whatever, is that they were always there.
"Over the BCS years, the Pac-12 had 20 teams in the top six. Oregon and Stanford have always been in the top four or five in recent years but, except for 2010, couldn't get in the top two."
The SEC, Dufresne believes, played to the BCS system.
"They, the SEC, knew how to game the system to their best advantage," Dufresne said. "I give them credit for it, for being ahead of the curve. And in a lot of those years, they were the best conference. But was it frustrating for other conferences? Sure it was."
Whether SEC Bias is real or not, Dufresne said, the only real answer is an eight-team playoff including all the Power 5 conference champions.
"I think eight teams is the best answer," he said. "People say it would dilute the regular season and it is difficult when all leagues don't determine a champion in the same way, with the same number of conference games. But for now I think this way is going well. I did sit in on that mock committee (when media members met in Dallas last month to replicate the Selection Committee process) and you can manipulate it any way you want to get an outcome. But I think what they have done so far is brilliant in terms of team placement."
That doesn't mean everyone will be happy, of course. No one will stop taping "GameDay" and looking for clues. Because while we love college football, we love a good conspiracy theory just as much.
- See more at: https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1701251#sthash.eYHtsVl6.dpuf
