Has The Big Ten Overtaken The SEC as The Most Dominant College Football Conference?

Could the tide be turning soon on the SEC’s decades-long dominance in college football? 

It’s a no-brainer, if you ask FOX Sports’s Colin Cowherd, who is convinced that the past two national champions — which were won by Michigan and Ohio State, respectively — are indicative of a power shift in the Big Ten’s favor.

Cowherd took a step further, stating that the Big Ten is now the premier college football conference headed into 2025.

“The best offensive player (Jeremiah Smith) in college football is a Buckeye,” he said on Monday’s edition of “The Herd.” “The best defensive player, Caleb Downs, is a Buckeye. Their recruiting, once again, was through the roof. Their NIL money is through the roof. … This is gonna be hard to stomach for a lot of people. The Big Ten is officially better than the SEC. It’s not just that Ohio State won the [national championship] last year, it’s that they humiliated Tennessee and dominated Texas. Texas scored 14 points. They’d scored over 14 points in 32 straight games in the SEC. … The year before, Alabama played Michigan when Michigan won the [national championship]. Alabama couldn’t move the ball. They barely had 100 yards passing.

“It looks a lot like it used to eight years ago when a Georgia [team] or a Bama [team] would face a Big Ten team, and the Big Ten teams couldn’t really generate consistent offense. The defenses, the athletes were just too good.”

With an expanded conference, the Big Ten conference now includes 18 teams, with the newest additions being Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington — all of which officially joined the conference in 2024.

In its first year in the Big Ten, Oregon capped off a perfect 13-0 regular season by taking down Penn State in the 2024 Big Ten Football Championship Game. Oregon earned a first-round bye in the newly formatted CFP, while two other Big Ten teams prepared for their first-round games. In those matchups, Penn State easily handled ACC hopeful SMU, 38-10, and Ohio State, coming off an upset by unranked rival Michigan, routed SEC powerhouse Tennessee, 42-17. 

“Something’s changing, and what’s changing is money,” Cowherd added. “Big Ten schools are bigger. They have more graduates. It’s easier to raise money for NIL. You add in (Oregon alum) Phil Knight and the Nike money. You add in USC and the LA economy money. The Big Ten cities — LA, New York with Rutgers, Chicago [with] Northwestern, Minneapolis, D.C., Seattle — Big Ten money is Hollywood, tech, and financial centers.

Currently, four of the top seven spenders in college football are Big Ten teams, according to On3. Ohio State, which had the most expensive roster ($20 million) last year, checks in at No. 3 on this year’s list, behind only Texas and Texas Tech. Three other Big Ten schools are close behind, with Oregon at No. 4, and Michigan and USC tied at No. 7.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the CFP format, which will almost certainly expand again in 2026, going from a 12-team format to a 14- or 16-team format. The Big Ten’s favored 4+4+2+2+1+3 plan, which would earmark 13 of 16 spots as automatic bids preassigned to conferences, was recently squashed by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey last week at his conference’s media days, according to USA Today. To expand the CFP in 2026, the SEC and the Big Ten would need to align behind a plan by Dec. 1. The 12-team CFP remains in place for the 2025 season.

[MORE: How 2024-25 CFP Would’ve Looked Under Proposed Expansion Formats]

To kick off the 2025-26 season, Ohio State is set to host Texas in a rematch of the Cotton Bowl in Week 1 (Aug. 30 at noon ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), and the Buckeyes are slight favorites over the Longhorns.

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