Despite CFP slump, there's no reason for SEC fans to panic — yet

I know what you're thinking, SEC fans, seeing all these season previews that have Oregon and Ohio State and Notre Dame and Indiana already Sharpie'd into the title game. I know you've heard all the proclamations of the SEC's impending demise, the three-years-and-counting championship drought, the ever-increasing dominance of the Big Ten.

You hear Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti throwing out red meat like how the conference has 11 playoff wins over the last two seasons, "more than double the next closest league," and you know exactly who he's talking about. I know it all gets your Southern blood boiling.

You might be tempted to start looking ahead to January — or, at least to November, when the first College Football Playoff rankings come out. You might think it's a good idea to start building your case right now for why the SEC needs seven, or eight, or 15 teams in the 12-team playoff bracket.

I'm here to tell you: chill. Relax. Let the season play out. Why spend time talking about the College Football Playoff when the neighborhood pool is still open?

There's a classic college football T-shirt beloved by your dad, or your grandfather, or your uncle who's just a little too into the local university despite never actually attending. "My favorite teams are [your favorite team]," reads the shirt — or bumper sticker, whatever, "and whoever's playing [your favorite team's blood rival]." It's the epitome of a dad-joke T-shirt: simple, inoffensive and easily understandable.

Somewhere along the line, though — I'm going to say 2021 — we absolutely lost the thread of college football. NIL, the transfer portal, congressional hearings, conference-hopping, playoff field sizes — it all combined to spin us, as an entire sport, into a squabbling maelstrom of hot takes. The actual games themselves existed only as subplots to the greater off-field drama consuming the entire sport.

The College Football Playoff only magnifies that farsighted focus. By setting the playoff bracket as the barometer of a season's success, every school tilts its entire worldview toward the playoff. Which is good, right and proper … as long as you've got some hate left over for your rival. And that's where the SEC still maintains a tremendous advantage over the Big Ten.

Let's posit, for a second, that there are seven SEC programs right this moment that are reasonably capable of making the playoff: Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Alabama. (We can also assume that some program is going to make the leap, whether it's South Carolina or Missouri or whoever, but we'll keep that out of the calculations for now.)

Now, how many Big Ten programs can you confidently say will be around in January? Three? Maybe four, if USC or Penn State catch lightning? The Big Ten is a top-heavy conference, whereas the SEC is a royal rumble that's even more perilous now that it's adopted a nine-game in-conference schedule.

Consider the gauntlet each of those seven playoff-viable programs must survive:

Texas: Oklahoma, Ole Miss, LSU, Texas A&M

Oklahoma: Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss, Texas A&M

LSU: Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Alabama, Texas

Texas A&M: LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas

And those games don't even include some customary any-given-Saturday rivals like Georgia Tech, Mississippi State and Auburn. It's possible, even likely, that a two- or three-loss SEC team will make it into the playoffs.

Look, if you want, you can live by the words of an old foe, Nick Saban, who declared earlier this summer , "Whoever wins the national championship doesn't define who has the best conference. I think the best conference gets defined by how many good teams you have from top to bottom. And I think the SEC has a lot of good teams from top to bottom."

Alternatively: The SEC can focus on getting its own house in order. A program that takes care of business between now and Thanksgiving, that focuses on the task at hand rather than worrying about what Ohio State fans or "College GameDay" commentators or Paul Finebaum is saying, is a program that will have the opportunity to let its game do the talking.

Keep the hate in-house, SEC. There'll be plenty of time to hate the Big Ten and the CFP committee later.