It was a bad day at the office for several playoff contending SEC teams on Saturday.

Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas A&M all went down to unranked teams and all three now have three losses. One would think that would eliminate those teams from the race. However, some in the media are already working overtime to ensure that doesn’t happen.

One look at ESPN’s Heather Dinich’s latest projected College Football Playoff rankings and it is readily apparent. She still has three-loss Alabama ranked in the Top 12. Ole Miss only drops four spots to No. 13 and Texas A&M holds steady at No. 15 after its overtime loss to Auburn.

Again, all three of those teams just dropped games to unranked opponents, with the Tide getting smacked by Oklahoma 24-3. Alabama looked worse in that game than Clemson did in its loss to unranked Louisville, and that’s saying something.

This scenario would leave a lot of two-loss teams on the outside looking in, including Clemson. Dinich has the Tigers moving up just one spot to No. 16 after its 51-14 win over The Citadel, while she has South Carolina jumping up four spots to No. 13 after the win over Wofford. And what do you know, the Gamecocks are another three-loss team in the SEC.

This isn’t just about Clemson. There are several other two-loss teams that would be punished if it were up to Dinich. Arizona State and BYU are barely inside of her Top 20 and two-loss Iowa State is outside of it.

Fans worst fears surrounding the expanded 12-team playoff just might be coming to fruition. Instead of a system that puts an emphasis on actual wins and losses, this is going to be more of an SEC-Big 10 invitational. At least we don’t have a bunch of three-loss Big 10 teams being propped up, although that’s exactly what would be happening if the teams in that league were faced with the same circumstances.

Make no mistake, the SEC is still a very good conference, but who’s to say it is THAT much better than everyone else this season. Outside of Texas, who is the only one-loss team, and Tennessee and Georgia, who both have two, every team has at least three losses.

At some point, you would think wins and losses have to matter. With expansion watering down these conferences to the point that a lot of the top teams are not even playing one another, in a lot of instances all we have are narratives, and right now the SEC propaganda machine is in overdrive.

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