Media Bias and the Myth of SEC Dominance - What Can the Big 12 Do?

In this episode of First and XII, we expose how media bias—especially from ESPN—shapes the college football landscape through flawed metrics like the FPI (Football Power Index). We dig into how the SEC benefits from inflated rankings, while conferences like the Big 12, ACC, and others are consistently undervalued. Is it analysis or just narrative control? We break down how this media favoritism impacts rankings, playoff seeding, and the national conversation.

Keywords:
ESPN FPI, college football rankings, SEC bias, media bias in college football, Big 12 football, overrated SEC, college football playoff rankings, ESPN narrative, college football analytics, First and XII podcast

Transcript

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It just means poor. Or does it? At least in the SEC, we're gonna talk about that on today's show. From Ola Homa, SAIC to Colorado, Arizona, SAIC to Cincinnati, we've got big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer beater. This is verse 12, you're all access passed to all 16 teams, all in every episode.(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to another episode of First and 12 on your host, Adam Gibby. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really, truly do appreciate it. If you'd like to get in touch with us, please don't hesitate to follow us on Twitter or on X at first and 12. That is at first and X, I, I, so 12 as in how you see it in the big 12. Any comments that you leave or any messages you send, I will bring that up on the show and I will highlight it as I want your voice heard. Also, while you're at it, if you could please like and subscribe. Leave that five star review. It helps the algorithm, helps more people to be able to find this show and helps just the community grow, something that I really want to have going by the time college football season starts here in a couple of months. So ESPN released their new FBI ranking and I'm going to read what exactly the FBI rankings are. I apologize for the length on this. It's gonna take me a few minutes to read all of it. But I do think it's important that you hear what it is and how it's made up. So here's what it says, each team's FBI rating is composed of a predicted offense, defense and special team's component. These ratings represent the number of points each unit is expected to contribute to the team's net margin on a neutral field against an average FPS opponent. In the preseason, these components are made entirely of data from previous seasons such as returning starters, past reformates, recruiting rankings and coaching tenure. That information allows FBI to make predictions, beginning in week one and then it declines and wait as the season progresses. It is important to note that prior season's information never completely disappears because it has been proved to help with properly accurate. Once the season is underway, the main piece of information power in the offensive, defensive and special team's predictions is past reformates from the seasons, games in terms of expected points added per game. Expected points added or EPA is a measure of success or failure that it takes into account of yards, turnovers, red zone efficiency and more to determine how many points each unit is contributing to the team's scoring margin. For example, if a team wins by an average of 10 points per game, it could be that plus seven of that is offense, plus fours defense and minus one is special teams. Because expected points added is built on play by play data, it's fair to say the FBI looks at every play of every game in the season. Okay, so a couple things I wanna point out here. Now first off, this is ESPN's metric and the SEC has an exclusive right steel with who? ESPN and they have this kind of algorithm for football, basketball baseball, for all the major sports. And for me, there's a couple things that just are very difficult to comprehend. There's a couple things that are just very kind of out there, but it's really hard to kind of prove whether or not something is accurate or what is being taken into account, sort of things like that. So recruiting rankings, that's all very subjective. Not, they go on to say that they look at four different categories, they look at four different ranking groups, but it's still very subjective. And we've seen this happen where a five star quarterback or five star recruit from a major school will transfer to another school that doesn't have the same kind of prestige. So think like an Alabama transfer to Clemson. Suddenly that rating drops all of a sudden. You see a drop even more if it's an Alabama player going to Cincinnati or West Virginia, something like that. And so that's kind of very interesting there. Also where it says that prior season's information never completely disappears. How can somebody rank that? How can somebody look at that and get a clear answer of what's going on in college football? It's just very open for interpretation. It's very open to not really knowing what is or isn't going on. The biggest issue I have with that is that ESPN can kind of get away with whatever and point to different directions. It's similar to the same issue that we have with college football playoff committee. I remember in particular last year there was a case where the college football playoff chairman got up and said when we're looking at teams we don't take into account close losses. What we care about is if you are winning or if you're losing games, he then later in the exact same interview when asked about BYU and their ranking because at the time I believe there ranked 13 or 12 or something. And a lot of people had them ranked a lot higher. He said, well, we look at how they've played and they've had quite a few close games. And so we just really had to take to put them in the top 10. He literally flipped losses in about a two minute stint. And this wasn't like one week he said this the next week he said that or he's talking about this team that he's talking about that team. This was all in the same monologue and within the same conversation. And so it's really hard to pinpoint what the college football playoff is looking at. Similarly, it's almost impossible to look at what ESPN FBI takes into account when they do their rankings. But again, what we do know is that ESPN and SEC are very close together. ESPN wants the SEC to do well. The SEC loves ESPN because of all the money they're getting. And so I'm going to read to you the ESPN FBI rankings 1 through 25. Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Miami, Tennessee, Clemson, LSU, Ole Miss, Auburn, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Michigan, Florida, USC, SMU, Kansas State, Arkansas, Missouri State, Arizona State, and Nebraska. In total, that is 13 SEC teams in the top 25, including Texas A&M who went in five blaster ranked in the top 10. Auburn who went two in six in the SEC in five in seven overall last year ranked in the top 20. Oklahoma who finished with a losing record last year in Arkansas who hasn't really done anything though the past decade. They went seven and six last year. They lost to Oklahoma State who went, went, listened to big 12 and they didn't have very many great wins. They had a couple cupcake wins. They had a great one against Tennessee and that was it. And yet the SEC is just boosting up their own rankings at the very beginning of the season. The thing is is that AP pollsters look at the ESPN FBI when they're filling out their bracket and they're saying,"Hey, I'm going to put in BYU into the top 15." Because they finished 13th last year that returned a lot of talent. We'll see about the quarterback situation. But I'm going to put them in my top 15 because they finished 13th last year. Well, now they get onto ESPN again, the most trusted source in sports. BYU is not there. Can you really rank them in the top 10? Well, maybe just to play safe, I'm going to drop into 18 because I don't want to be the only person who puts them in the top 10. And ESPN can't be that wrong, right? Like maybe they're a little off, but they can't be that wrong. Do you see the problem here? ESPN is popping up the SEC to a point where it's almost impossible for other people to have other opinions. It's almost impossible for Fox or CBS or whoever to get in front of a camera in front of millions of people and say, "I believe that Iowa State and Baylor and Colorado should be in the top 20 this year." They're not on the ESPN top 25, FBI. How can you say that? You look like you don't know what you're talking about, at least in the eyes of the common fan. Now, I realize if you're listening to this podcast, we're beginning in June. We're still over three months, well, we're about three months away from the start of the college football season. If you're listening right now, you're a diehard fan. So you probably share very similar viewpoint that I share in that, what are we doing? Like what's going on? And the problem is, is like the SEC has underperformed tremendously. And I can give tons of examples. I'm just going to give a couple. The first one is, let's just go look past this past week in College Baseball. In College Baseball, the SEC had, I believe, enough, I might be mistaken here, but I believe they had nine teams ranked in the top 20. They had almost half of those teams. I can track more than half of those teams host a regional tournament spot for the baseball tournament. And I'm sorry if I'm not getting the right jargon right. I'm not a huge college baseball fan. But by the way, they were, they were hosting, again, they had nine in the top 20. They were viewed as the by far best conference in college baseball. There were 16 teams that hosted regionals. Seven of those teams didn't make it to the second round, meaning that the other nine did. 31 conferences exist in College Baseball. Of those seven hosts that lost four of them came from the SEC. There are only four out of, I believe, 13 teams who made the tournament that are still standing. Now, that's not a terrible ratio. Actually, when you think about it, because only one out of four teams in each regional makes it to the super regional, but when you're propping up the SEC, given them nine of the top 20 rankings, making them seem like why are we even playing this tournament? It's just going to be a bunch of SEC schools. That is underperforming at least against the narrative. In fact, I have the rankings here. The SEC were ranked two, three, four, six, nine, ten. So six in the top 10, 15, 16 and 17. So really nine in the top 17 were from the SEC. It's just insane. That's crazy to me. If you're not able to back that up, I'm not saying I expected all nine to make it to the super regional, but at least get six, right? Get seven. Now, if you're going to talk to talk, you got to be able to get at least seven teams to the super regional. They got four. So good College Baseball from this past year. Seven made the round of 32 out of 14. Now you say, "Okay, half. That's great." But again, the narrative was nobody could beat the SEC. The SEC is unstoppable. If they had more teams, we'd put more in. The only reason that the two teams didn't make it from the tournaments because we had to make room for the big 12. We had to make room for the ACC in the big 10. We just couldn't fit team 15 and 16 from the SEC, although they all deserved it. The SEC was just that good. They had nine teams who were considered the higher seed. So what I mean by that is the eighth seed, playing the nine, they're the three seed, playing the 14. Only seven made it. There were six. Sorry, there were three higher seeds in the SEC that lost. I think there were only three others period. Now again, I realized, you know, you make 14 teams, seven make it to the second round. That seems fair ratio, right? It's not though. When you have the narrative of the SEC is the almighty, all powerful. No, they're just competitive. Just like everybody else, the SEC went seven and seven. The big 12, I believe, went six and two. If I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong on that. But they did, they did really, really well. They did very well in the first couple rounds of the NCAA tournament, but the almighty SEC went seven and seven. Finally, in college football, like they've been okay. You know, they've won a bunch of national championships, but it's not like it's the whole SEC. In fact, since 2011, which is 14 years, by the way, 15 after this year. Only Alabama, Georgia, and all of the other national championships. The 13 teams have not won a national, Texas A&M has not won a national championship. Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas. None of those teams have won a national championship. And yet, they're propped up as the unbeatable conference. They're propped up as this conference that is just untouchable. The last four seasons, they've gone 26 and 24 in Bullgame, just north of 500. It's not bad, right? The big 12 is about the same. The SEC kind of stinks. The last couple of years, the ACC has gone seven and 17 in Bullgames, whereas the big 12 is gone 98. The reason I did the last two years is because that's when the current big 12 kind of started looked like the current big 12. But the SEC is, again, 26 and 20. That's not all that impressive. That's what? 53, 54 percent winning. Yet, they're built up as this untouchable force, this conference that can't ever lose and how dare you say that the big 12 can compete. How dare you think that other conferences are even on the same levels as the SEC? Well, you put them in Bullgames and they went half the games. You know who else wants half the games? The ACC. Normally, the big 12, the big 10. You know, it's not like the SEC is running through Bullseason going 10 and 2 every season and going, "See, told you, why are we even here?" No, they're going 500. I don't see why this narrative continues. I don't know why we're still going off of this belief that the SEC is this untouchable force that nobody can touch or mess with and we can't have thoughts for ourselves and we just need to trust this ESPNFPI model. In the FBI rankings, there is no BYU. There's no Colorado. There's no Iowa State. There's no Baylor. Baylor, I can kind of understand. You know, I kind of feel like they snuck up at the end of the season. Nobody had them on the Raiders at all. Suddenly, they appeared at the end of the year. I believe eight and four in the regular season. And suddenly everybody's like, "Whoa, Baylor actually was pretty good this year." It's just that they started one in three or two in four or something and nobody had them on the Raiders, which is part of college football. You know, if you knock yourself out in the early in the season, there's not really much you can do. It's going to be really hard to call it back from that unless you're in Georgia, Alabama. But BYU, Colorado, Iowa State, how are they not ranked? Especially BYU and Iowa State. They finished 12th and 13th, I believe, in the final rankings last year. Both are bringing back a ton of production. Both are looking at their season saying, "Hey, we're going to be pretty good this year." No, ESPN, FBI thinks that Arkansas who finished sevens of being ranked higher, Auburn should be ranked higher. In fact, Auburn should be in the top 15 at two and six from last year. They're going to be fantastic. You know, how do you back that up, ESPN? How can you honestly say Auburn's a top 15 team? Iowa State's not. Auburn is. You know, you're making this up as you go. Here's the problem. Because you've set this precedent already, and there was one part in that where I read that, you know, things stack on each other. Well, you're starting week one with all these teams in the top 25. And so assuming they all go two and one or three and all, they're not in conference, now you're going to have 11 teams in the SEC ranked in the top 25. And now when you play each other, it doesn't really hurt anything. You know, if Alabama loses to Oklahoma again, well, they're already setting it up this year, at least in the preseason, toward that's not going to keep Alabama out of the play off this year. If Auburn wins the iron, but that's not going to keep Alabama out of the play off this year, as long as Alabama goes nine and three, Colorado, Iowa State, BYU though, they got a claw their way up. And again, I realize this isn't the AP poll. I realize this isn't the college football playoff poll. This is what they look at. The college football playoff committee is made of humans who look at these kind of things. They watch games. They see a little number next to a team's name and they make assumptions about that team. If I see a number against next to Oklahoma and I don't see a number against, you know, next to Oklahoma State, I'm going to assume Oklahoma should probably win that game, right? Like it just makes more sense that way. Oh, this is frustrating. So I think it's time for college sports fans to just rise up and just say SEC ESPN enough is enough. Yes, we know Texas and Georgia are good. Nobody's doubting that. We know Alabama is probably going to be back to the normal selves this year. Nobody's doubting that. But why are we putting Texas A&M in the top? Whatever they honestly done the last decade or so, they start every year ranked super high and they always drop it. They always fall. What is Auburn done lately? Or Oklahoma? What's Arkansas done? You know, why aren't we asking these questions? Why are we holding anybody accountable? I would love the opportunity to talk to somebody from ESPN, somebody who does this algorithm, who puts the data into the computers and say, all right, so explain to me how Auburn is ranked in Iowa State is not. Please explain to me. Because by your own metrics, I mean, let's just go through it. Returning talent. Iowa State great. Okay. Last year performance. Iowa State great. What else do you want? I mean, are we really looking at recruiting rankings from high school players that aren't going to play for either team? Is that what the difference is? Oh, you're looking at the opponents catch, why? We don't know what the opponents are going to do yet. I mean, last year, BYU and Arizona State were projected at the very bottom of the conference, they finished at the top. Why are we assuming that all these teams in the SEC are going to be great? We don't know that. Missouri very well could go 10 and 2 or they could go 4 and 8. Arkansas could go 4 and 8 or they could go 8 and 4. Who knows what Auburn is going to do, but you know what? We're just going to rank Auburn in the top 15. I would love to ask ESPN that. How do you justify that? How do you look at Iowa State? How do you look at BYU? How do you look at Colorado and say, well, the numbers and data say they're not 25, but Auburn is Texas A&M's the top 10. Oklahoma's the top 20 team. I don't get it. It just makes no sense to me whatsoever. Again, it's just frustrating because it's an uphill battle. You know, I put this out on X the other day. It was yesterday and it was in regards to, you know, the CSPN, FBI rankings and it said, just win because that's the argument you always hear, you know, qualifying bomb gets on his radio show or or there's the sports center at night or whoever it is. And they bring up these topics because I'm in one smile, you know, you get a collar. Well, what about the big 12? What about the ACC? Why are they so far back? Well, they just win their games. They'll make the playoff. Yeah, you're right. But it's like running a mile and giving everybody in the SEC a one minute head start. You know, could you still beat them? Yeah, but they got a head start. These FBI rankings are a huge head start for the SEC. Remember how we talked about Baylor not really appearing on anybody's radar until the end of the season? This is kind of what's happening right now. It's going to be harder for a team like BYU, like Colorado, like Baylor, Texas Tech even to climb high into the ranking unless they're just running the table. When I say run the table, I mean, they got to probably start 6, 7, 8, no to get into the top 10. Whereas the team like Texas, George Alabama, even Texas and him in this case, they can start 6 and 2 and still be ranked nearer at the top 10. And it's because of these preseason narratives, the season beliefs of, well, these teams have to be great. They were ranked in preseason top 10. Look at Florida State last year. They completely fell apart. They finished dead last. I didn't realize that until I was researching for another show. Florida State finished dead last out of 15 teams in the ACC. Just crazy. That just shows you don't know what's going to happen here. You know, I think Florida State is going to bounce back and they got a good coach. I think they obviously have great recruiting. They have good N.I. going to be fine, but you don't know what's going to happen here to you. You know, maybe Auburn doesn't have been a top 10 team, but why are we ranked in him that way right now? What have they actually done besides a good recruiting class to deserve a top 15 ranking? On the flip side, what have IOS State and BYU not done to deserve to be kicked out? I mean, in the age of the transfer portal, you never know you're going to get with transfers. It just, you never know. I mean, unless you land a will Howard from Kansas State to Ohio State, you just don't know what's going to happen. You don't know how they're going to mesh. You don't know how quickly they're going to pick up the offense of the defense. You don't even know if they're going to make it the whole year because players are now starting to enter the transfer portal before the season even ends. And there's a lot of data to show the teams who end, or sorry, players who entered the transfer portal once are much more likely to enter a second time. If they've gone twice, they're a prime candidate to leave a third time. You know, I just don't think it's fair that we're starting off this season with ESPN's FBI, the gold standard of preseason rankings, at least before the AP poll insane every single team in the SEC, not named Mississippi State Kentucky Vanderbilt, which is a little side. No, I think Vanderbilt deserves to be ranked over Auburn. I don't think either deserve to be ranked, but Vanderbilt at least had a poll sluster and they have Diego Pavia coming back and he's just a fun player to watch. But all of the three teams are ranked. You know who's not ranked 14 of the 16 big 12 teams who's not ranked in the top 20. Any of the big 12 teams. 12 of the ACC team. It's messed up. If you like today's show, please again, like subscribe. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I truly do appreciate it. As we continue to go, please, like I said, if you can leave comments, if you can put an ear input, I will talk about it on the show. Like I will actually talk about it and I'll talk about it for a long time. The other day, I had somebody reach out on X about a playoff model and we ended up talking about it on the show for about three and four minutes. I'll do that for you because I want this to be a fan show. Am I going to get other podcasters on the show and have conversations with them? Yeah, probably because I want to hear their insight too, but I'm going to be starting something next week. I'm really excited for it. It's going to be called No the Fo. It's going to be a series that's going to cover all 16 teams in twice a week. I'm going to cover a team. I want to go alphabetically. So Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, Colorado, etc. I want to talk to fans. I don't want to talk to other podcast hosts, other podcast hosts or two people, you know, coaches or players, anybody like that. I want to talk to you, the fan. So if you're a Colorado fan and you want to have that conversation, we will talk for 20, 30, 45 minutes, whatever it takes to get to know Colorado on this is to first off get Colorado fans excited for the season, but then also let other teams who are playing Colorado this year to kind of get a little bit of knowledge on them. So that BYU, Utah, you know, whoever else is playing Colorado can listen back to this podcast and say, okay, this is their quarterback. This is what their expectations are, etc, etc. So if you're interested in that, please just send me a message on X. You just direct message me again is first and 12. So F-I-R-S-T-A-N-D-X-I-I, first and X-I-I. If you can do that, I'd really appreciate it. And what I'm looking for is somebody who knows their team. So if you're listening to this podcast, probably somebody like you because again, the common fan is not listening to College Football at the beginning of June. Only the die hards are. So thanks for being here. So yeah, if you know the depth chart of your team, you know the schedule like the back of your hand, you know the quarterbacks, tendencies, you know, the weaknesses. We just want to have a real conversation about what your team is, what the expectations are and what to really expect from them. So if you're interested in that, please let me know and we'll get you on the show and we'll have a nice conversation and get some real good feedback. Thanks again, have a great day, see you next time. Bye.[Music]