Only time will tell whether the SEC’s fall is a blip on the radar or represents a changing of the guard in college football.
Winning college football games and the SEC Conference have been synonymous for the past quarter of a century. The rest of the college football looked up to the SEC with envy.
Well, fast forward to October 2017. Oh, how that picture has changed!
The SEC is not the dominant presence it once was.
Sure, you have Alabama at the top of the league–the #1 team in the country … again. But, after the Crimson Tide, who are the other dominant teams?
I’ll admit that Georgia is solid this year. But they’ve been strong before and, then, found ways to drop games that they shouldn’t have lost. Auburn has rebounded nicely since a tough Clemson loss, but we really don’t know how strong this team really is. The same can be said of Florida. Yeah, the Gators recovered from a loss to Michigan in Week 1, but (there’s that word again) any unbiased college football fan can see that the 2017 Gators aren’t vintage in caliber.
UT’s Butch Jones is on the hot seat (photo, SB Nation)
In the past, what separated the SEC from the rest of college football (in my opinion) was the quality of teams in the middle-to-bottom portion of the league. Those teams were always stronger than like-situated teams in other leagues. That’s simply not true this year. Texas A&M and Arkansas are plain, old ordinary–at best. And LSU and Tennessee are disasters. Die-hard SEC fans all over sports radio are asking for Butch Jones (UT) and Ed Orgeron (LSU) to be fired.
The SEC’s slide is evident in media terms, too. Consider this. The SEC has been a staple on CBS’ ‘Saturday Game of the Week.’ You could set your watch by it: 3:30, Saturday, CBS, SEC football. But look at what CBS has served up the last two Saturday’s? It was Alabama v. Vanderbilt and then Georgia v. Tennessee. What happened? The two winners prevailed by … get this … a combined score of 100-0! So much for attracting eyeballs nationally!
And it gets even worse. There are Mississippi and Missouri–two teams at the bottom of the conference–and two teams that aren’t competitive in any major league.
Courtesy: WDBJ7
So where does the conference go from here? Denial is one option. If you a SEC fan, perhaps you’ll stay true to your conference by saying there isn’t a problem: “The SEC is best, has been best, and always will be the best.”
That’s a biased opinion, of course. I’m a fan who lives in the Northeast. I think the gap has closed significantly between the SEC and other Power 5 conferences–so much so that I’d argue that the ACC is the best overall league.
Only time will tell if what I’ve just described is a blip on the radar screen or represents a changing of the guard in college football.
