Illinois coach Bret Bielema went 11-29 against SEC opponents during his five seasons at Arkansas. Now, he figures his current team would be ranked if it were playing in that conference.
That’s a generous assessment.
Illinois is having a solid season so far. The Fighting Illini beat Nebraska 24-13 on Friday and are 6-3 with the regular season entering its final month. Bielema deserves credit for how his team has played this year.
Still, Big Ten coaches seem unusually focused on the SEC lately. Earlier this week, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti criticized the conference after the first College Football Playoff rankings featured a heavy SEC presence. After Friday’s win, Bielema added his own take, saying Illinois would be in the rankings if it played in the SEC.
“But to be in this job, where we’re at right now, 6-3, we beat another 5-3 team. If we were in the SEC, we’d probably be a top-15 team.”
He may have a point that a 6-3 Illinois team playing an SEC schedule would get ranked. A top-15 spot is harder to buy, though. It would depend a lot on who those wins came against.
And it’s not clear the Illini would actually be 6-3 with an SEC schedule. Their three losses have come against Purdue, Duke and Ohio State, which beat them 42-19. That doesn’t exactly look like the kind of schedule that would prepare a team for the SEC this season.
Illinois has one particularly notable win over Oregon, though the Ducks have struggled with quarterback Dante Moore out. Overall, the wins don’t make a strong case for a top-15 ranking.
Bielema’s own SEC record is worth considering, too. He went 11-29 against conference opponents at Arkansas, including an 0-8 mark in his first season. The roster wasn’t entirely his, to be fair, but the record is still the record.
Based on that history, it’s hard to imagine his current team sitting at 6-3 in the SEC right now.
The Big Ten is having a down year. It happens. The conference has been one of the sport’s strongest in recent seasons, but Ohio State lost its starting quarterback, Oregon did too, and Penn State and Michigan have both struggled.
Indiana is ranked fourth, but needed overtime to beat both Michigan and Minnesota.
There’s been plenty of criticism of the committee’s first rankings, including accusations of SEC bias. That debate is fair. But the alternatives weren’t especially convincing, either.
