SEC
Likely Ranking: 10th
Biggest Competition: Arkansas
The SEC is college football’s best conference and they know it. It seems like almost every year, the SEC gets two teams in the playoff, and is the only conference to have a inter-conference National Championship game, and they’ve done it twice in the last 12 years (LSU vs Alabama and Georgia vs Alabama).
Although Vanderbilt and Arkansas are the normal two bottom dwellers of the conference, both would likely still win conference championships in the C-USA and MAC most years. This conference is good top to bottom even though the standings say otherwise.
BYU Football would REALLY struggle to stay healthy against an SEC schedule. I’m not sure how many guys would be left standing if the Cougars had to go against Alabama, Georgia and LSU all in the same month.
I do believe that BYU is better than Arkansas, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Kentucky, and one of the Mississippi schools. Unfortunately, since the SEC is so big, the Cougars would likely only play two or three of these teams. If they won both of those, and pulled off an upset in another conference game, the Cougars would have an outside chance of making it to 6-6 and a bowl game.
BYU Football would never compete for even a chance of a Conference Championship game in this conference given where the team currently is.