Into the Fire: Style Points Do Not Matter in the SEC

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One of the benefits of playing in the super-division within the conference where “it just means more,” is that every win you get will be earned. Teams are always expected to handle their business in rankings based world of College Football, but when you play in the SEC West, handling your business just means winning the game and nothing else. LSU takes on Ole Miss this Louisiana Saturday Night and when they do so they will be close to a two touchdown favorite. However, winning by 10 or 12 does not matter in any grand scheme. The only thing that should matter to LSU, a team whose SEC championship and College Football Playoff aspirations are growing by the week, is getting a win and moving on because in the SEC, style points do not matter.

You may look at what happened to Ole Miss when they faced Alabama and say “that is the standard other SEC teams need to live up to when facing Ole Miss.” If you say that then you are wrong. That is not the standard, that is atypical when it comes to an intraconference action in the SEC. If fans, committee members, or even players are thinking that way then they are not living in reality. In reality, earning a victory in the SEC, especially the SEC West, will always be one of the toughest things any team in College Football will do on a week to week basis. The conference is too competitive and too good to knock any team for winning a close game. This is why teams like UCF will never get into a College Football Playoff and it is why wins within the SEC should and do count more towards an overall resume than wins inside any other conference in the country. It’s not worth winning if you can’t win big in pee wee hockey, the Pac 12, and other College Football conferences. In the SEC, one point wins are as big as winning by 7 touchdowns.

So this week, when LSU takes on Ole Miss a lot of people will be holding the Tigers to a certain standard that has been concocted in their minds over the course of the first month of the season. It does not matter if that standard involves results of previous games played or stat columns, the fact of the matter is that standard doesn’t matter if it takes into account how LSU beats Ole Miss. Style points do not actually count toward your resume in the long run when you play in the SEC. Style points are phenomenal if you are a non-SEC school looking to leapfrog an SEC in the national standings, but if you are an SEC team, the benefit you get for playing in the world’s best conference is that it does not matter how you win, just as long as you win.

So for all of the skeptics and the Bama obsessed people watching College Football this weekend, remember this; style points may matter in gymnastics or Big Ten football, but in the SEC when LSU plays Ole Miss, the only thing anyone should care about is who won the game and who lost the game. And if you are a player on an SEC team and you are thinking about score sheets and style points, may god have mercy on your soul because you will be embarrassed. Just ask Mississippi State what happened when they rolled into Lexington and did that very same thing.

– Alan Michael