Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd has been known to dish out a few hot takes over the years.

Take, for example, his infamous “Hey LeBron, Ben Simmons is here. We’re good, bro,” a few years back.

Classic stuff!

Or maybe you prefer his “some of you owe Lincoln Riley an apology” soundbite from last football season.

The arrogance emanating from my computer screen after watching that is palpable.

Well, folks, Cowherd is at it again, though I will say this one is a little more subtle and nuanced than the first two.

There is A LOT to unpack here, so I will go through a few of my “favorite” points of his and refute them one at a time.

“The best offensive player is a Buckeye, the best defensive player is a Buckeye.”

This reminds me of those years when people would (incorrectly) clown the rest of the SEC for touting conference supremacy when Alabama was winning a majority of the championships.

Great, Colin! The best offensive and defensive players each play for Ohio State.

That’s one Big Ten team out of 18.

The best quarterbacks are all in other conferences, and besides Drew Allar, who is documented to be up-and-down at best, I am not sure another Big Ten team would crack a top-10 list of signal callers.

The best running back resides in South Bend, Indiana, while some of the best defenses belong to SEC teams and Clemson.

The Big Ten is a fantastic conference and is super deep this season, but the proliferation of top players is more widespread than our friend Colin here would have you believe.

Which leads me to his next point.

“Their recruiting… is through the roof. Their NIL is through the roof.”

The Big Ten is definitely one of the best recruiting conferences in the country, no doubt, but to frame it as if all of a sudden the conference has come out of nowhere and dethroned the SEC is laughable.

Let’s take a look at this past cycle’s recruiting rankings, courtesy of 247Sports.

Eight of the top 12 teams were from the SEC, including the top three (Texas, Georgia, and Alabama, in that order).

Only Ohio State, Oregon, and Michigan found their way into the top-10, and you have to scroll all the way down to 13 (USC) to find another Big Ten team.

Ever since Urban Meyer arrived in Columbus, the Buckeyes have been one of the top recruiting outfits in the country, so that’s nothing new.

The only new kid on the block, relatively speaking, is Michigan, who needed an unheard-of $10 million NIL infusion from a literal multi-billionaire in order to not crack the top-five.

Dominant stuff!

“They (Texas) scored 14 points in 32 straight SEC games. Ohio State held them to 14 points.”

This one is just splitting hairs from Colin, but it’s worth addressing nonetheless.

Texas played three ranked SEC teams in the back half of last season: Georgia twice and Texas A&M once.

They scored 15, 19, and 17 respectively in those games.

They also played unranked Arkansas and only scored 20 points.

Acting like Ohio State holding the Longhorns to 14 points is some Herculean task is pretty misleading stuff from Cowherd.

It was also a tie game heading into the fourth quarter and the total yards ended up being 289-283 in favor of the Buckeyes, so, a domination, it was not.

You know who Texas did dominate?

The Michigan Wolverines.

Perhaps Ohio State fans are familiar with that program?

“Big Ten schools are bigger, it’s easier to fund-raise for NIL… Big Ten money is Hollywood, tech, and financial centers. There’s a lot of car dealerships in the SEC.”

And thus we have arrived at Cowherd’s central argument here… and it is hot vomit!

Check out the list of top 10 spenders in college football in terms of NIL numbers.

Not exactly a list dominated by Big Ten schools, huh?

By my count, it’s a tie between the SEC and Big Ten with four a piece.

There must be a ton of “car dealerships” in Austin and Lubbock, right, Colin?

This is exactly the kind of dumb ass, coastal elitist crap I would expect from a guy like Cowherd.

“Oh, the South is full of dumb, poor hillbillies! Only teams from New York and Los Angeles can spend money on football!”

Has he ever been to an SEC campus? Those psychos would literally die for their team to win a national championship and their alumni bases are pretty flush with cash, too.

It’s not like Columbus, Ann Arbor, Madison, and State College are all bustling metropolises, either.

My absolute favorite part of his argument is when he name-drops New York and Chicago as cities that support his argument.

Rutgers and Northwestern? Really?

First, Rutgers is in Piscataway, which isn’t exactly uptown Manhattan.

Second, those are two of the worst Power 4 football programs of the past decade, so pointing to them as the harbingers of the SEC’s demise made my eyes roll so hard they practically fell out of their sockets.

Even if the Big Ten has tech money behind it – which is a moot point since states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida are all welcoming tech companies by the truckload with their tax-friendly policies – it wouldn’t mean too much anyway.

These tech nerds, coastal liberals, and vapid celebrities don’t give a damn about recruiting and football the way the South does.

It’s the same reason USC had a top-five class last cycle and then fell to 13th by the end of it; no one in Los Angeles has the same bloodlust for national titles as the people of Athens or Tuscaloosa do.

Stick to the NFL, Colin.

College football would be a lot better off without ignorant casuals such as yourself speaking about things you know so little about.