It Turns Out the SEC Was Right the Whole Time

After being hypothesized for the better part of the last two weeks, No. 4 Ohio State's annual rivalry game against Michigan was officially canceled on Tuesday. And with the Big Ten's original cancellation of a fall football season before it flip-flopped in September, the Buckeyes finished the regular season having played just five games and are currently ineligible for the Big Ten Championship Game, barring a last-minute rule change.

The Big Ten started its season too late and had no wiggle room to re-schedule games and now finds itself in the biggest mess of any Power Five conference with the decisions of the College Football Playoff committee looming.

But back in August, it was the same Big Ten which was lauded for its bravery to cancel the fall football season while leagues like the SEC were supposedly putting players and coaches in harm's way by being too blinded by money to do what was right. One journalist even called the day the Big Ten reinstated its football season the "darkest day" in the league's history.

And yet, every major conference ended up playing football this fall. And the SEC did it better than anybody.

The SEC took its time, made a schedule that allowed for teams to re-schedule games when issues inevitably arose and is a week away from making it through an entire season in which every team in the league will likely have played at least nine games, most a full 10-game slate. And now it will have a championship game with both teams vying for College Football Playoff spots while the Big Ten's lone shot at a national championship is currently unable to compete for the conference title.

And sure, there have been COVID issues and scheduling conflicts in the SEC this season, just as there have been in every conference across the country. But the SEC — along with the ACC and Big 12 — took the necessary steps to make sure a full season could happen safely and fairly rather than just canceling the whole thing in the summer and ending up in a situation like the one in which the Big Ten finds itself now.

The presumptive Big Ten champion and the league's only College Football playoff contender now must sit at home and hope the league reverses course again and nixes the rule it specifically devised for this very scenario — rules for thee, not me, as it were. The season the SEC played this year, while chaotic and far from perfect, looks better by the day.