SMU's Rhett Lashlee reiterates critique of SEC, says Duke should have made CFP over James Madison last season
Rhett Lashlee took a shot at the SEC last year at ACC Kickoff. This year at the preseason media event in Charlotte, he took a victory lap on the take he fired off at the podium.
“Let's look at the past and be honest with ourselves,” Lashlee said on Friday. “Last year, we went 8-6 against the SEC. And it's funny. I ruffled some feathers last year here, unintentionally, when I said since [1964] the same six schools have won a certain conference every year. Ironically, it held through last year.”
That “certain conference” Lashlee discussed is the SEC.
Here’s what he said in 2025, hot off a College Football Playoff appearance from the season prior. The comment arrived as the former Arkansas quarterback boasted the depth of the ACC, in which the Mustangs reached the conference title game their first year as a league member in 2024.
"The ACC, you can't have an off week or you're going to get beat," Lashlee said at ACC Kickoff last year. "It doesn't matter if you're playing at Clemson, it doesn't matter if you're playing whoever that last-place team is at home. If you have an off week, if you play like we did in the playoff game, you're probably going to lose. Look at our Duke game. It was a miracle we won. We went out and turned it over six times. We should have lost. And that was a good team."
"It's just a week in, week out — that's the league you want to be in, that's where you want to be. You look at our league, we had like four 10-win teams, two playoff teams, a handful of nine-win teams, 13 bowl teams, there's just not a lot of easy wins on the schedule. And there's other leagues that claim depth. But like, the SEC has had the same six schools win the championship since 1964. The same six. Not a single one has been different since 1964. That's top-heavy to me. That's not depth."
That stat’s technically incorrect. Lashlee was referencing Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Tennessee and Auburn. But the SEC credits Kentucky as a co-champion in 1976. The Wildcats share the status with Georgia for that season; however, that title was retroactively awarded in 1978 after Mississippi State forfeited all 1976 wins, among others, due to NCAA violations, as reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Lashlee, though, doesn’t appear to be mired in the minutiae.
He also went to bat for Duke on Friday, arguing that the the Blue Devils should have been in the CFP alongside Miami last season. The Hurricanes, of course, snuck into the 12-team field as an at-large bid before making a run to the national title game.
“What they did last year winning the league was incredible, in a very competitive league,” Lashlee said of a Duke team that infamously reached the ACC title game via a five-way tie for second place in the conference despite winning just seven total regular-season games.
Duke’s 6-2 ACC record and ultimately its conference opponent win percentage — the league's fifth tiebreaker — paved the way for its upset of Virginia in the conference title game, except since the Blue Devils weren’t among the five highest-ranked conference champions last season, they missed out on the CFP. James Madison got in instead and suffered a 51-34 loss to Oregon in the first round, a defeat that was even more lopsided than the score suggests.
“I think we all know they should have easily been in the Playoffs,” Lashlee said, regarding Duke. “When you win the ACC, the way they did and who they beat, they should have been in instead of a team from the Sun Belt. But hopefully things get learned and that doesn't happen again. We should have been a two-bid league.”
During the 2026 campaign, each Power Four conference winner will be crowned an automatic qualifier for the CFP, no matter their ranking. That’s new, but, then again, so is the ACC tiebreaker system, meaning the old model that gifted the Blue Devils a spot in the conference championship last season is a thing of the past.
