The SEC will be without a representative in the national championship for yet another season.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has long been synonymous with dominance in college football. For much of the past two decades, SEC teams like Alabama, Georgia, and LSU have defined the path to national championships.
However, the 2024 and 2025 seasons marked an unprecedented shift in the college football landscape, leaving the SEC absent from the national championship game for two straight years.
In the 2023 season, Alabama, the SEC's strongest contender, fell short of expectations after an overtime loss to Michigan in the playoff semifinals. That loss paved the way for the Wolverines to face Washington in a showdown for the national title. Fans were shocked to witness a championship without the SEC, but it set the stage for an even more unexpected repeat this year.
This season, Ohio State and Notre Dame emerged as the top teams, each punching their ticket to the national championship after playoff victories over Texas and Penn State, respectively. Texas, despite its move to the SEC, did little to quell criticism that the conference's era of dominance may be waning.
The absence of an SEC team in consecutive title games begs the question: when was the last time this happened before 2024? The answer takes us back to the first year of the College Football Playoff in the 2014-2015 season.
Alabama, ranked No. 1 at the time, suffered a heartbreaking 42-35 loss to Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl semifinal. The Buckeyes, led by third-string quarterback Cardale Jones, went on to defeat the Oregon Ducks 42-20, claiming the national title and leaving the SEC on the sidelines.
For nearly a decade after that, the SEC reasserted itself, with teams like Alabama and Georgia becoming fixtures in the championship game.