Southeastern Conference Football Woes
Have you noticed the other big story in college football this year?
The big story is, of course, Indiana. It’s hard to get one’s head around Hoosier Hysteria being about a prolate spheroid instead of a roundball, as one of the country’s premier basketball schools that hasn’t won anything on the gridiron in almost 60 years, is now a football juggernaut that dispatched fellow Big Ten-mate Oregon, 56–22, in last Friday night’s semifinal contest. To be honest, it’s still hard to get one’s head around Oregon being in the Big Ten (along with Washington, UCLA, and USC).
But still, give them their due. All hail the Hoo hoo hoo Hoosiers.
The other big story in college football is the decline of the SEC (Southeastern Conference).
The fact is, teams from that league haven’t won a championship for the past two years (and not winning this year will make it three in a row). Of the five SEC teams that made the playoffs this year (out of 12 spots), only Mississippi won a game over a non-SEC opponent, beating Tulane, 41–10. And Ole Miss’s loss to Miami in the semifinals last Thursday means no SEC team will play for the championship again this year — and that’s for the third year in a row as well.
Since the inauguration of the 12-team playoff last season, only two SEC teams have made the semifinals (Ole Miss this year and Texas last year), and neither advanced to the championship game.
Contrast the SEC’s current demise with the brute-force dynamo it’s been for the past two decades. From 2014–2015, the year the four-team playoffs began, to 2022–2023, SEC teams won six of the first nine championships. And in two of those years, an SEC team beat another SEC team in the championship game. From 2006 to 2022, the SEC won 13 of 17 national championships.
On the skids is the once-dominant football conference, the one whose supporters fill stadiums with chants of “S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!,” the one whose commissioner lobbied for seven spots in this year’s 12-team playoffs but went 4–9 in bowl games this season, the one about whom sports-talk-radio loudmouth Paul Finebaum insisted he would leave the country if they didn’t win the championship — “I’m leaving the country because I am so sick and tired of being harassed by Big Ten fans on our show.”
That conference is no longer its once-commanding, overwhelming self.
It has all the advantages. Its schools are in the South, with good weather year-round, with warm winter days. Recruits generally like to stay close to home, and SEC schools are located directly in or very near hotbeds of high school football — Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas. Coaches could recruit myriad five-star prospects without ever boarding a plane. It can boast unrivaled historical success — on the field, in the media, on NFL draft day — success that is a magnet for standout players. And it is home to mammoth stadiums that fill with deliriously frantic fans who go crazy every week because SEC football (drum roll) “just means more.”
But now, not so much.
What happened? Money happened.
What happened?
Money happened. When the Supreme Court in 2021 ruled that the NCAA could not claim an antitrust exemption, that opened the door to student-athletes making money off their name, image, and likeness. They could hire themselves out for endorsements, autograph sessions, skill camps, and other money-making ventures. And there seems to be no limit on how much they can be paid for their “services” — $500,000, $1 million, $2 million, as much as, according to some reports, $6.8 million. (RELATED: Figures Flip the Field)
Also in 2021, the rule was dropped that athletes in the major sports (football, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, and baseball) had to sit out a year of competition if they transferred to another major school. Players started chasing the money from school to school.
The third thing is the House v. NCAA case. In 2025, this court case was settled, which opened the door to major colleges paying athletes directly, to the tune of $20.5 million per annum per school.
Those three things evened the playing field in big-time college athletics. Now, a school like Illinois, or Iowa, or Texas Tech, with a big NIL deal combined with promised House money, can inveigle that five-star quarterback to look seriously at them. They can tempt that second-string nose tackle at LSU — the stud waiting his turn behind the all-American starter — to forgo the apprentice period for the Bengal Tigers and move directly into the starting lineup for the Illini or Hawkeyes or Red Raiders.
More five-stars may still opt for the Georgias or Alabamas or LSUs of the world, but those powers won’t be able to stack talent like they used to. They won’t be able to build depth, and at the same time deny their rivals the services of star players. If the all-American nose tackle suffers injury, the five-star second-teamer isn’t there to take his place — he’s playing somewhere else. Said Bret Bielema, head coach at Illinois, to ESPN: “The second[-string] guard at a university doesn’t want to be the No. 2 anymore. He wants to be a starter, so he’ll leave. That is unprecedented.”
A school with a big booster fervent about sports can shoot a football team right to the top. Cody Campbell, at Texas Tech, can pump his oil money into the Red Raiders football program — and watch his also-ran school that never won anything conquer the Big 12 and get a bye in the College Football Playoffs.
Or Mark Cuban, an Indiana alum, can pony up millions for IU football. At Michigan, billionaire booster Larry Ellison is said to have financed one of the biggest recruiting flips in recent history, as five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood switched his commitment from LSU to the Wolverines. And, of course, everybody knows about Phil Knight’s financial allegiance to Oregon.
All of which undercuts the advantage the SEC used to claim. Just this past year, for the first time in 18 years, an SEC school did not claim the top recruiting class — that honor went to USC.
Radio talker Colin Cowherd summed up the new landscape in a sound bite: “In the SEC, Alabama territory, your number 2 or 3 booster can be a car dealer. In the Big Ten, it’s a car maker.”
Money has brought the SEC back to the pack.
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