Reports of the SEC's death in football are greatly exaggerated

For the second consecutive year, a college football national champion was crowned who did not reside in the SEC. Ryan Day and his Ohio State Buckeyes hoisted the trophy in Atlanta, and to many, that signaled the end of the SEC's dominance on the football field.

But, in the words of the immortal Lee Corso, not so fast my friends.

The SEC was picked to dominate 2024

It would be foolish not to admit that 2024 was a bit of a down year for college football's premier conference. Besides not even having representation in the national championship game, the SEC finished 7-6 in their postseason games, including losses by Georgia, Alabama, and Texas -- the three teams many picked to win it all this season.

With the conference's three premier teams all being sent home without supper and the Big Ten flexing their collective biceps with two teams in the final four and a national champion in the first ever 12-team College Football Playoff, it seems the SEC is on a downslope ... or are they?

The important thing to remember about college football, maybe even more than any other sport, is that everything is cyclical. The powerful programs will have their dips but, for the most part, they don't stay down long.

To show an example of this, there was another time when those outside the SEC had them listed among the deceased, and I was included in that group. But the conference shook off the hate, regrouped, and dominated for nearly another decade.

In January of 2015, Ohio State and third-string quarterback Cardale Jones toppled Alabama in the first-ever College Football Playoff and kept the SEC out of the championship game. The year prior, Florida State beat Auburn to win the final BCS National Championship.

For two consecutive years, the SEC did not win a national title, and in the second of those years, they did not have a team in the championship game. In the 2014 season, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU -- the three most powerful teams in the conference -- all lost their postseason games.

Beginning to sound familiar?

The parallels are almost uncanny, and fans are just as quick to kick dirt over the league this year as they were 10 years ago. But to think that the SEC as a whole -- less yet coaches like Kirby Smart, Kalen DeBoer, and Steve Sarkisian -- will just tuck tail and go lick their wounds is a fool's paradise.

Indeed, the transfer portal, NIL (or soon-to-be revenue sharing), and conference realignment have leveled the playing field to a certain degree, but it seems premature to believe that a conference that has wielded so much power in football for so long will simply roll over and accept the brave new world without having a big say in it.

On the contrary. It's a safe bet that the SEC will be back and stronger than ever and will find a way for other programs and leagues to play catch-up.

Was the SEC really that terrible in 2024?

If you really consider the 2024 season, things weren't as bad as it may seem for the SEC. It was a perfect storm of unavoidable circumstances and calamity that we may never see again.

Alabama was knee-deep in replacing the greatest college football coach of all time and the exodus of players to the portal once Nick Saban shocked the world with his retirement. But Kalen DeBoer took a mixed roster of players who stuck it out, players he recruited, and arguably the most inconsistent quarterback Alabama has seen in over a decade in Jalen Milroe and still had the Crimson Tide in the playoff picture down to the final week of the season.

After losing in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff in 2023, Steve Sarkisian had Texas in the SEC Championship Game in their first year in the league, bringing them back to the playoff, where they won first-round and quarterfinal games only to lose in the semifinals to Ohio State.

After back-to-back championship seasons and then a one-loss season, Kirby Smart was coaching what was perhaps the thinnest roster since his first year on the job. There were more Bulldogs sent to the NFL in the last three years than any other team in the nation. Yet Smart managed to navigate what is widely believed to have been the toughest schedule in the nation to win an SEC Championship and secure a high seed in the College Football Playoff.

All told, the three top teams in the conference finished the season with a collective 34-9 record (with no team having more than three losses) and two CFP wins (both by Texas). Not quite the fall from grace that so many want to paint.

Only four teams in a now 16-team SEC finished with a record under .500, and the in-conference cannibalism was a real thing, with the better teams beating on each other regularly. Even Vanderbilt got in on the fun.

We don't exist in a vacuum, so judging the entire conference by the limited failings of one season is absurd in its conception.

Don't count out the SEC in 2025. In fact, beware them.

Many so-called experts are already passing the torch to the Big Ten as the new lead dog in the college football world. Even SEC mega-homer Paul Finebaum is bending the knee, saying via Sports Illustrated, "The Big Ten at the moment owns college football. There's no way that you can say it doesn't when you go back to back, that's generational."

While "at the moment" may be somewhat true, to say that a two-year run is generational is overstating things. The SEC has proven time and time again that a small dip in championship production is no indicator of a permanent downslope. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

"Generational" is what the SEC has done for the last 25 years, during the BCS and College Football Playoff eras. It's hard to argue that the SEC always seems to get off the mat when you look at numbers like this.

Now, that's generational.

The SEC still had plenty of teams vying for the championship in the last two seasons, and coaches like Kirby Smart, Steve Sarkisian, Josh Heupel, Mike Elko, and Kalen DeBoer are not simply going to roll over and say "Well, things have changed, we'll just accept it".

On the contrary, those coaches and others will adjust and evolve. When the spread offense threatened to challenge the dominance of SEC defensive speed, the top coaches in the conference (led by Nick Saban) developed ways to combat that narrative while at the same time incorporating similar offensive schemes.

The idea that heavy use of the transfer portal, player payments, and having bigger, less top-heavy conferences can't be overcome by the SEC's premier programs is asinine. Look for teams like Georgia, Texas and others to be more hungry, and better prepared in 2025.

This year was lightning in a bottle for Ohio State and the BIg Ten. It's the first year of a new playoff format. A flawed seeding process. The destruction of the Pac-12. A couple of SEC programs that were in the midst of coaching or major personnel changes. An unchecked NIL system.

None of those things will be true in 2025, and while the Big Ten landed a couple of blows the last two seasons, the heavyweight fight is far from over. It wouldn't at all be surprising to see the SEC have the first-ever team to go 16 or 17-0 to win a national championship.

The gap between the SEC and other conferences may have narrowed, but it's still there. The premier SEC programs have already started to figure out how to exploit it. If you're looking to bury the SEC, you're going to need a bigger shovel than currently possessed.