Bret Bielema Says Illinois Would Be Top 15 in the SEC. He Coached There. He'd Know
After beating Nebraska to reach 6-3, the Illinois coach took a shot at the College Football Playoff rankings. The SEC, as always, heard it.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Illinois beat Nebraska 24-13 this week to get to 6-3 and bowl eligibility, and afterward Bret Bielema said what Big Ten coaches have been muttering since the first College Football Playoff rankings came out on Tuesday. If Illinois were in the SEC, he said, they'd probably be a top-15 team. He said it with a grin, the way a man tells his neighbor he could have had the bigger house if he'd wanted one.
The grievance has some numbers behind it. The committee put two-loss Alabama at No. 5 and two-loss Texas at No. 7, and the SEC had five teams in its top 12. There isn't a three-loss team anywhere in the top 20. Bielema's argument is that losing to an SEC team counts as a kind of moral victory, while losing to anyone else is just losing, which is also how my old church graded sins.
SEC fans answered the way SEC fans answer everything, at length and with the Lord's name in it. One outlet pointed out that 6-2 Tennessee, whose losses include one to then-No. 1 Texas, sits at No. 16, just outside the top 15. In other words, an actual SEC team with fewer losses than Illinois can't get in either. Bielema's imaginary Illinois would have to outrank a real Tennessee, which is the kind of math you only do after a win.
The best part is that Bielema is not some outsider guessing at the place. He coached Arkansas in the SEC from 2013 to 2017 and was fired. He's not a critic of the SEC so much as a former tenant who still has opinions about the landlord. He's also said before that the SEC kinda wanna live in 2005 forever, which is a strange insult from a man in the Big Ten, a conference that would love to live in 1965.
None of this will change the rankings. The committee doesn't read quotes; it reads logos. And Illinois, if it keeps winning, will get its bowl game, its ranking, and a very nice rivalry with every message board south of Kentucky.
It's a fact of college football and of life: the man who left the club always knows exactly what's wrong with it, and he's always the last one to be asked back.