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Say what you will, the SEC reeled off an unprecedented run
By Jordan Cox
Published:
Stop the carving on the tombstone. Since pundits have declared the SEC dead, let’s take a moment to remember the best conference in college football.
Wait, what’s that? The conference is not dead? Well, then let’s take a moment to honor the most dominant conference in college football.
Yes, life in the College Football Playoff era got off to a miserable start on Dec. 31, 2014-Jan. 1, 2015. But for the past decade — and if you want to get technical about it — sixteen years, the SEC did what no other entity in sports has.
Since the start of the BCS era in 1998, the SEC won nine national championships in sixteen years. More than half of the national championship teams during a decade-and-a-half era of college football came from one conference. That includes a run of seven out of eight from 2006-13.
No team, no organization, no conference or entity in sports will ever match the SEC’s run.
If you think I’m overstating or being hyperbolic, I’m not. This season is the first in 10 years that the SEC is not represented in the national championship game. And that, for what it’s worth, is a byproduct of the playoff system. The more games you play, the harder it is to keep winning.
There have been other runs in sports, absolutely. But few are as long, and as decorated, as the SEC’s. You have to win once you get to the postseason, you know.
Dating back to the early 1990s, the San Antonio Spurs missed the playoffs just once in 20 years, with a couple titles sprinkled in along the way. The New York Yankees won four world championships in five years from 1996-2000, and the New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four seasons from 2001-04.
Those streaks, specifically from the Yanks and Pats, are impressive. But it’s not like the AL East and AFC East won seven championships in eight years. While Alabama is the only SEC program to repeat as champions during the run, five SEC teams won championships in the 16-year era of the BCS which speaks volumes about the consistency of the league’s member institutions.
During the same 16 years the BCS was operational, just twice did consecutive Super Bowl winners come from the same division. In the same 16 years from 1998-2013, teams from the same division won consecutive World Series just once.
The SEC got beat in its three New Year’s Six appearances, there’s no debate. But the debate surrounding the so-called “death” or “demise” of the SEC doesn’t exist.
The mountain from which SEC programs and fans pounded their chests was climbed for years. A decade’s-plus of resume-building won’t be torn down in 48 hours.
Yes, the SEC will never win seven straight national championships again. But neither will anyone else. If there is any conversation regarding the conference outgoing commissioner Mike Slive ushered into dominance, it’s that the the SEC has come crashing down to earth and the playing field has been leveled.
It’s a run worth honoring. Urban Meyer is building a SEC-like power at Ohio State and Mr. Dockers will insert Michigan back into the conversation — he’s done it after just a week on the job. Meanwhile, the young guns out West look to put the Left Coast back into the national spotlight with Oregon playing for college football’s new trophy on Monday night.
And while Meyer, Harbaugh and Helfrich do that, and fans around the country feed the SEC a slice of humble pie this offseason, Slive and the 14 head coaches back down South will kick back and remember the SEC had the best bowl record in 2014.
After living in Birmingham, Ala., Jordan left the ground zero of SEC Nation to head south to Florida to tell the unique stories of the renowned tradition of SEC football. In his free time, his mission is to find the best locales around.
