SEC and its Dear Leader should accept reality: League no longer rules college football

The time has come for the SEC’s fans, its media machine and especially its commissioner to fess up to the reality that has simmered under the surface this entire college football season.

The world has changed significantly. And the old, reliable narrative that there’s a different quality of football in the SEC than other leagues is now more myth than reality.

Isn’t admitting a problem the first step toward salvation? Let’s tell it like it is — the SEC is a basketball league now.

OK, OK. That might have been a low blow. But Notre Dame 23, Georgia 10 is a quarterfinal result that should resonate for a long time to come — especially in the context of the SEC’s miserable postseason.

A few weeks ago, you had some of the biggest names in the ESPN apparatus devoted to the idea that its most important college sports business partner, the SEC, got short shrift by the College Football Playoff selection committee because only three teams made the field.

Now, the league is down to one team — Texas, which wasn’t even an SEC member 12 months ago — and was a desperate fourth-and-13 conversation from being completely shut out of the semifinals. And when you combine it with the SEC’s 1-4 record in postseason games against the Big Ten, something has shifted. This is different.

A cynic might say that once it became legal to pay players, the SEC no longer had an advantage in, um, talent acquisition. But a more generous interpretation of the current climate doesn’t even need to invoke tales of nefariousness. It’s simply a fact that stockpiling talent is harder now, and recruits who might have been ticketed for the SEC in past years are organically landing at a wider group of programs.

Georgia wide receiver Dillon Bell (86) reacts after dropping a pass against Notre Dame.

By the way, that’s not just an SEC vs. Big…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sec-dear-leader-accept-reality-023347951.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-03 02:33:00

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