The SEC has a weird tendency of losing bizarre early-season games every year. Hard to shake the reputation when that's the case.
But if you look at those games, they're always played at home and there are fifty people in the stands. Everybody's still in football mode. You watch a non-UK and non-Florida home game in the SEC and it's better, but not by much. A ton of apathy and empty seats.
Home games aren't home games in that dynamic. There's very little advantage. It leads to weird situations like losses to Charleston Southern and .500 conference records for teams that should be much better.
I still tend to think it's a four-bid league.