Any professional athlete knows the limits of this theorizing. It doesn’t really matter what happens in these hypothetical games. What matters is what actually happens on the field or the court, but it’s difficult for fans to wrap their heads around that fact when their once-dominant team is down and out. The best athletes don’t make excuses for their shortcomings, but the same cannot be said for fanbases—especially fanbases of historically great teams.
If you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about college football fanbases within the SEC (Southeastern Conference) that cannot seem to accept that Big 10 conference teams (Michigan and Ohio State, respectively) have won the championship two years in a row. The last time that happened was 1994-1995 (Who remembers when Nebraska was good?), and two different Big 10 schools haven’t won in a row since Minnesota in 1941 and Ohio State in 1942. Still, the fans of those big bad Southern teams, who have seldom gone more than 3 years without a team in their conference winning the “natty,” (national championship), are in extreme denial about the heartland dominating them where they were once the sole dominators.
It’s obvious to any casual viewer why this era of SEC dominance is over. NIL (or Name and Image Likeness) allows college football players, and all collegiate athletes for that matter, to be paid, giving different teams more official recruiting power and shifting the balance. (Although many teams have paid student-athletes under the table for years).
This balance shift was compounded with a new playoff format, with twelve teams competing to be in the National Championship game instead of four, allowing for teams ranking 5th-12th a chance to compete. This change makes regular season games and upsets slightly less important than this series of single-round elimination games, further changing the cadence of the season and putting more weight behind teams that can hold together a consistent performance throughout the playoffs.
Tweets about hypothetical SEC team victories have spiraled into a viral meme on Twitter: “The SEC is undefeated in hypothetical matchups.” No SEC fan will ever admit that Ohio State, Michigan, or red-headed stepchild Penn State might actually be stronger than the teams in their mighty conference. They claim that a 9-4 record in the SEC is more impressive than an 11-2 record in the Big 10. Instead of looking at the actual results of games that have happened, they will tweet incessantly that 2019 LSU would beat 2024 Ohio State, no questions asked. What’s the point of this fanfiction? Supposing that LSU in 2019 is a better team than 2024’s Ohio State is understandable, but claiming some kind of imaginary victory five years after your team’s heyday as a coping mechanism for their declining performance is kind of pathetic.

Sure, I’m biased because I’m an Ohio State University graduate and a Buckeye through and through. Ohio State fans are not used to decades of losing seasons and a unique kind of misery that fans of losing teams experience nearly every year. When you think about it, the majority of college football fans are rooting for a bad team. Take my parents, for instance. They’ve rooted for Northwestern football for decades and decades, no matter how miserable it’s gotten. They’ve stuck it out through losing records that last literal years. Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State fans could literally never understand what it’s like to lose 34 games in a row.
As an Ohio State fan, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I really don’t care that much about regular conference games. I know that we’re going to beat Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland, and Minnesota with ease. The only game I truly care about is the Michigan game, and if we lose that, I’m on speed dial to tell Ryan Day’s address to the world. (Just kidding!) But seriously, Ohio State will be winning basically every game under the sun, but fans will only be happy if we beat Michigan or win the National Championship. Luckily, this year, we were able to do the latter, so we didn’t have to send Ryan Day to live out the rest of his days in a Siberian work camp because of his failure to do the former for the 4th time in a row.
SEC and Ohio State fans are parallel in our toxicity. We’re so used to winning so much for so long that the second we don’t win every game that we want, our eyes start twitching, and we get incredibly irrational. SEC fans tweet that Alabama would beat Indiana as their coping mechanism, while Ohio State fans harass our own coach until we’re blue in the face. Who’s to say which is worse?
I really respect the way my parents, and all fans of mediocre teams interact with sports. When they win a game, they’re happy because they really understand the importance and weight of a win: any win. When they lose, they’re bummed but appreciate the spirit of the competition nonetheless. It’s probably the most neutral way to enjoy sports.
This new era of college football is not going anywhere, and I’m glad. I’m not just glad as an alumni as one of the biggest dogs (or, in our case, nuts) in the race who has thrived under this new format in its inaugural season. I’m glad because it gives teams like SMU and Arizona State, who historically had no chance of winning a National Championship, snowball chances to actually come out victorious. College football is boring when the same four teams win every single year, but it makes sense that the fans of those four teams are still in denial at this point. SEC fans know deep in their hearts that hypothetical matchups they come up with while laying in bed at night don’t mean anything, but the longer they live in the past, the less happy they’ll be. No matter the fate of my teams, I’m going to try to live like a Northwestern fan going forward: grateful when my team wins, upset when my team loses, and ambivalent towards wasting my time thinking about “what ifs.”
Source: Getty Images (Unsplash+)
