Alabama Carries the SEC’s Pride Into a Rose Bowl Reckoning

With the league watching the Big Ten pull further ahead, the CFP quarterfinal against No. 1 Indiana is a referendum on whether SEC supremacy is slipping away.

Iowa running back Kamari Moulton runs with the ball in the Hawkeyes’ win over Vanderbilt in the ReliaQuest Bowl. The Big Ten is 7–1 in bowl games this season. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

LOS ANGELES — The entrenched superiority complex of the Southeastern Conference is on the line this week, and it needs Alabama to come through. If it just means more, the SEC must win more.

The SEC has watched the Big Ten win the last two national championships. It has watched its rival conference claim the top two seeds—and three of the top five—in the College Football Playoff. It has watched Illinois upset Tennessee and Iowa upset Vanderbilt in Big Ten vs. SEC bowl games. It has watched Texas A&M lose a playoff game as a home favorite to Miami, Missouri lose a bowl game as a favorite to Virginia and LSU lose a bowl game to Houston. But Texas did beat Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.

The SEC is 3–6 in the postseason, and one of those victories was against itself. Meanwhile, the Big Ten is 7–3. (USC ruined the league’s perfect start against TCU in the Alamo Bowl, then Nebraska and Michigan lost Wednesday.) You can argue that non-playoff bowl games largely don’t matter, but they’re still playing them and there’s still a scoreboard saying who wins. Results will be monitored.

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Given all that, the league’s considerable pride is riding with plucky underdog Alabama against big, bad Indiana on Thursday in the Rose Bowl. Viewed through the prism of history, that is an absurd statement—the Crimson Tide have been the dominant program of the last 20 years and arguably the most successful in history, while the Hoosiers are the losingest power-conference program of all time. One has been a dynasty, the other is an anti-dynasty. But here in this strange new world, Indiana is the 13–0 wagon with the No. 1 ranking, favored by a touchdown, and Alabama is the three-loss team trying to pull a stunner in Pasadena.

“This is a different Indiana team than it’s been the last 50 years,” said Indiana linebacker Isaiah Jones.

This much is sure: Indiana is not bowing down to the Tide’s tradition.

“You [reporters] probably know more about the [Alabama] mystique than [the Indiana players] do,” said Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti, a former Alabama assistant. “Our guys just know what they see on tape.”

What they see on tape is a team that loss by two touchdowns at Florida State, at home to Oklahoma and by three touchdowns on a neutral field to Georgia. The Tide have also hit some high points, most notably a win at Georgia and the comeback from 17 points down against the Sooners in the first round of the playoff, but this hasn’t been a vintage Alabama season.

Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson runs the ball against Oklahoma in the first round of the College Football Playoff. / Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

In terms of recruiting cache and stockpiling highly rated talent, the Tide remain at the elite end of the sport. Only Ohio State and Georgia are comparable. But Bama hasn’t performed to that level yet in two years under Kalen DeBoer. His record is 20–7, which is more losses than Nick Saban endured in his final four seasons ruling the sport. 

That’s why a segment of the Alabama fan base would not have been overly distraught if things had worked out for DeBoer to go to Michigan. If he’s going to win them over, winning Thursday would be a great start.

The SEC is guaranteed one semifinal spot, with Mississippi playing Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. But after starting with five in the 12-team bracket, having just 25% of the Final Four wouldn’t do much to restore bragging rights. Especially if the other 75% is made up entirely of Big Ten teams. The SEC hasn’t placed a team in the CFP championship game the last two seasons.

If the Big Ten wins a third straight title, it will be a powerful answer to the four straight the SEC won from 2019 to ’22. And if the Big Ten does it with a third different school—Indiana or Oregon following Ohio State last season and Michigan in ’23—it will equal the LSU-Alabama-Georgia titles from ’19 to ’21. There would still be a long way to go to approach the SEC’s seven straight natties from ’06 to ’12, won by four different programs, but a third straight would signal a paradigm shift.

The question to be answered here is how Indiana handles the pressure of this situation as a No. 1 team for the first time in school history. Even while going 24–2 over the past two seasons, the Hoosiers have not been No. 1 and not been favored in some big games—they were a touchdown underdog at Oregon, a three-point dog in the Big Ten title clash with Ohio State and a 6.5-point underdog last year in the playoff against Notre Dame.

The players say they’re not feeling that additional weight, though. The fact that few of them were seriously recruited by the likes of Alabama can offset any burden that comes with being favored.

On the flip side, we’ll see if rare underdog status in a nonconference game is liberating for Alabama.

“It’s what you want, honestly,” said Crimson Tide quarterback Ty Simpson. “We talk about having our backs to the wall, being an underdog. It’s crazy to think that in 2025, Alabama is thought about this way. We kind of embrace it as a team. I do especially just because everybody, like I said, wrote us off, didn’t expect us to get here. The point of proving people wrong is what we want. We’re all here for it.”

The SEC isn’t performing to its own standard thus far this postseason and has some proving to do this week. This Rose Bowl is the single biggest prove-it moment for the league. Alabama is on the clock to show that it’s still Alabama.

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