The 2024 season will be remembered for the dominance of the Big 10; if the Buckeyes win on January 20th, that dominance will be etched in history. Even without that, two teams in the semifinals, four in the playoffs, and one playing for the natty! It looks good. However, this dominance comes at the back of the downfall of another conference, the Mount Everest of college football: SEC. What happened to the SEC? Let’s get the Lane Kiffin argument out of the picture first. We’re not going to pin everything on the SEC being dealt a bad hand due to their strength of schedule.

The reasons are plenty, and on the January 11 episode of College Football Addiction, TJ Pittinger lists out a few. Let us start with perhaps the biggest one. Nick Saban left Alabama exactly a year ago, and looking back, that hurt both Alabama and the SEC. The extent of the damage? Well, 2024 would be the first time since 2000 that we didn’t see an SEC team finishing with less than three losses.

The Longhorns’ loss to the Buckeyes put the Steve Sarkisian team on three, and there’s that. Georgia has 3, Tennessee has 3, Ole Miss has 3, and Alabama has 4. In 2000, the SEC had Florida going 10-3. So, you can’t argue that it was not a bad year. How does Saban’s leaving fit into this?

“I know that Georgia had won a couple, and LSU had some titles sprinkled in there, but Alabama has been the gold standard for our sport for a long time, and even Alabama wasn’t Alabama these past few years. But Saban leaving was always going have the Tide taking a little bit of a step back. Just like a rising tide raises all ships, a lowering Tide then lowers the SEC as well. Certainly the perception of it,” Pittinger said.

In the Kalen DeBoer era, we knew that Bama wasn’t going to be the same, and the Crimson Tide’s start to the season fooled everyone. In the end, four losses and three when you were double-digit favorites? On the one hand, it damaged Alabama’s reputation. Plus, it also didn’t help everyone that Alabama beat. Take, for instance, Georgia. You lost to a team that lost to Vanderbilt? All of this happened in the SEC this year.

Remember Florida Gators’ start to the year, and we were writing about how the program is going to fire Billy Napier and replace him with Lane Kiffin? Towards the end, the Gators woke up and spoiled the party for LSU and Ole Miss. Even Brent Venables’ Oklahoma, which finished 6-7, wreaked havoc on Alabama. These losses hurt the programs that were looking to get into the top 12 for an entry into the playoffs.

Of course, one can argue that NIL and the transfer portal have leveled the playing field, but there is something else, something more obvious, that we are missing, and it’s all SEC’s own doing.

Did SEC’s greed lead to its downfall?

Let’s go back a bit. Not a lot, just four years! In December 2020, Disney announced its massive 10-year, $3 billion deal with the SEC, and one could argue it has paid off for the broadcaster. The ratings are off the roof. Who else did it benefit? Well, the SEC programs.

The 2000s and 2010s were extremely successful for the conference. You had an extremely successful Alabama team, LSU won a few titles, Florida got its share, Auburn had a natty, and in the last five years, even Georgia got its hands on two championships. However, much of it was built on the success of Alabama, LSU, Florida, and UGA. The Disney deal is just one example of money flowing into the conference. There has been more capital from bowl games and other TV deals. Even the money from national championships gets distributed around the conference. How did it affect things?

“Teams like South Carolina, Missouri, Florida, Ole Miss, Texas A&M are pulling kids that they wouldn’t necessarily have pulled before where all of that talent in the past was maybe going to Alabama or Georgia, or LSU. Now, it’s going everywhere and the depth has certainly taken a toll at those major programs like Bama, LSU, UGA,” Pittinger said.

Moreover, the additions of Texas and Oklahoma also didn’t help the other SEC programs. The realignment meant that everyone in the SEC besides Georgia that the Longhorns played in 2024 took an extra loss. Oklahoma beat Alabama, and that didn’t help Kalen DeBoer’s team. When Lane Kiffin asks us to consider the strength of the schedule, he has a point. The SEC is just a stronger conference in the middle and towards the bottom than other conferences. Of course, you can say that Big 10 was 5-1 against the SEC teams in the postseason. Are you seriously counting the meaningless bowl games? The one Alabama played against Michigan where Jalen Milroe was making reels about his draft announcement.

SEC had high hopes for Georgia and Texas in the playoffs, but losing Carson Beck hurt the Bulldogs and the Longhorns? Well, they took the Buckeyes as close as they could, and on another day, with that sack-and-fumble not happening, it could have been a different result.

Ready for a prediction? The next year will be a vengeance tour for the SEC. There are a lot of hurt egos, and when you have even Big 12 taking shots at you, there is going to be clapback. That clapback will be beyond historic.