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22 Days Until Kansas Football: What if KU were in the SEC?

Forget everything, basketball included: What if KU were in the SEC?

NCAA Football: Kansas at Texas Tech Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Fortunately, this series is almost over. We’ve looked at every G5 conference, and we’re winding our way through the rest of the P5. Today, it’s the mighty SEC.

I’ll be honest, I came away rather unimpressed with the SEC after crunching these numbers. The SEC is basically Alabama, LSU, Auburn, and then everybody else. Sorry not sorry; that’s just how it is.

As always, we’ll use the F+ ratings available at FootballOutsiders.com. If you read up, the two components of F+ (S&P+ and FEI) both adjust for opponents and strength of schedule, so this should theoretically give us a pretty good idea of how well Kansas would fare outside of the Big 12.

Kansas in the SEC

School 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013
School 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013
KANSAS 123 108 127 99 101
Florida 85 16 27 32 48
Georgia 2 59 30 4 22
Kentucky 87 72 91 68 97
Missouri 56 73 75 20 14
South Carolina 57 84 88 38 10
Tennessee 105 23 18 24 72
Vanderbilt 91 61 83 115 50
Alabama 1 1 1 2 2
Arkansas 92 56 11 9 87
Auburn 9 13 33 7 4
LSU 21 6 10 22 17
Mississippi State 16 63 16 13 33
Ole Miss 60 35 5 5 28
Texas A&M 59 26 34 42 23

By the numbers, KU would have just one win in the SEC over the past five years: Vanderbilt in 2014. However, KU-Kentucky would have been fun in 2013. Maybe even KU-Arkansas. And KU-Tennessee might have been competitive last year. Ok, fine, it wouldn’t have been, but seeing Tennessee down there with Nebraska in triple digits is funny to me.

Plus, KU isn’t going 0-5 against Missouri. The longest winning streak Missouri has ever had against KU was five games, and that was from 1938-1942. So considering mU won the final three matchups from 2009-11, we can logically assume KU would have won in 2015 at the latest, if not two or three other times.

Overall, fortunately, KU hasn’t met up with any SEC schools on the gridiron lately. For the most part, it looks like it wouldn’t have gone well.

Fun Fact: Kansas hasn’t played an SEC school in football since playing at Auburn in 1988. The Jayhawks are 5-7-1 all-time vs the SEC (including two bowl games), and have only played Auburn, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Tennessee.