It Just Means More Teams Watching from Home

And then there was one. 

With No. 7-seed Notre Dame's 23-10 win over No. 2 Georgia, the mighty SEC has been reduced to one team remaining in the College Football Playoff, and that team will enter its semifinal a substantial underdog -- and even if Texas manages to beat Ohio State, does that really even count? -- while three other Midwestern powers battle it out for the crown. 

This, a year after the SEC champion lost to the Big 12 champion in the regular season, then to the Big Ten champion -- a different Midwestern power -- in the semifinals. That loss snapped the SEC's 4-year national championship streak, and its 8-year run of placing (at least) one team in the national title game.

This, on the heels of a bowl season that's seen Alabama lose to Michigan, South Carolina lose to Illinois, Texas A&M lose to USC, and Oklahoma lose to Navy. Oh, and Tennessee get blown off the field by Ohio State. 

Taken in isolation, all of those data points can be explained way or outright dismissed. And perhaps Texas stuns Ohio State, beats Penn State/Notre Dame and extends the SEC's national championship run to 14 of 19 (15 of 20 if you retroactively count Texas's 2005 title).

But zoomed out, that data points to one conclusion: that the SEC's run of absolute supremacy of college football is over. 

The portal, NIL, and the 12-team Playoff have democratized the talent that the SEC used to horde, and Nick Saban's brilliance is not likely to be duplicated by any of his successors.

Does that mean the SEC will never win another national championship? Of course not. It just means the late 2000s and 2010s are gone, and they're not coming back. 

More pressing for the SEC as Year 1 of its post-Saban era comes to a close: for how many of these 16 programs is the arrow pointing upward? That's obviously up for debate, but my back-of-the-envelope evaluation breaks down like this:

UP

Texas: The only program in college football to make the last two Final Fours, and played for the conference title in Year 1.

Tennessee: It's a good thing for Josh Heupel that we're asking if his offense can catch up to his defense.

Vanderbilt: We'll see what becomes of this program once Diego Pavia moves on, but for now this program has an identity and a head coach that wants to be there for the long haul.

South Carolina: If Carolina does not make the CFP next season, 2025 will be a disappointment. Always a fun and terrifying place to be.

Florida: Most of the public waited for an implosion that never came. Riding a 4-game winning streak into 2025, Billy Napier will be expected to show equivalent growth with, maybe, the conference's best quarterback. 

LSU: Blake Baker's Year 1 progress with the defense and Garrett Nussmeier's return set the stage for a big 2025 for Brian Kelly. Recruiting needs to be better, though. 

SIDEWAYS

Alabama: We're giving grace here, no one was going to step into Saban's size 25 New Balances in Year 1. Let's see what happens when Kalen DeBoer isn't trying to go square peg/round hole with his quarterback.

Texas A&M: Mike Elko was hired to improve upon what Jimbo Fisher left behind. Year 1 was more of the same.

Georgia: From two straight titles to two straight years out of the Final Four. Things never clicked with the 2024 team, but we'll see if this year was a blip or the start of a trend. If all of Kirby's teams from 2017-24 played a round-robin, what's the 2024 team's record?

Ole Miss: I'm on record that Lane Kiffin's roster- and culture-building strategy will always add up to less than the sum of the parts, but at worst he's turned Ole Miss into a reliable 10-game winner. Will he ever have a collection of talent as good as this one, though?

Missouri: Mizzou has clocked back-to-back 10-win seasons, but it remains to be seen if Eli Drinkwitz and Co. can scale upward from there.

Mississippi State: Mississippi State was better than its record in Year 1 under Jeff Lebby. The Bulldogs are fighting an uphill battle to reach the CFP even at the best of times, though. 

Arkansas: The 2024 campaign was good enough to buy Sam Pittman another year but, five years in, the Hogs are still looking for their first above .500 SEC season under the current regime. 

DOWN

Oklahoma: Brent Venables will enter 2025 on the hottest seat in the conference.

Auburn: At 11-14 (5-11 SEC) it hasn't come together like the folks on the Plains envisioned. Hugh Freeze is betting the proverbial farm on Jackson Arnold. 

Kentucky: Mark Stoops just had his worst year since Year 1 at Kentucky, in Year 13. 

Again, no one's claiming that the SEC will never win another national championship. The lesson of Indiana and Arizona State is that any program can transform overnight in the Portal/NIL era, and the 12-team Playoff now has room to reward such teams. The lessons of Michigan, Penn State and Notre Dame is that the programs that Ole Misses and the Missouris should keep chopping wood and eventually the tree will fall. 

The SEC is still, technically, alive to win the national championship in 2024, and could have the right team get the right breaks to win it all in 2025.

But for the first time in a long time, the national champion any given year is as likely to come from any other conference than it is from God's Chosen Conference.