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SEC top talent and the NFL Draft have been synonymous with each other for decades.
When the NFL comes calling each spring to give the best college players their NFL dreams, it’s the SEC that generally gets the most love. Just like the SEC has owned college football on the field for seemingly forever, it also owns the NFL Draft when it comes to college conferences.
It all continued this past weekend at the NFL Draft in Green Bay, where an astounding 79 SEC players were drafted in the 3-day event. That not only broke the previous mark held, of course, by the SEC, but it blew the previous record out of the water. The previous all-time record for 1 conference in a single draft was 65, which the SEC had in 2021. The SEC tied that record in the 2022 draft.
The SEC not only rules the draft on a yearly basis, but it also makes sure to get at least 1 player drafted in each round of seemingly every draft. According to SEC football contact Chuck Dunlap, there have now been a whopping 232 consecutive rounds of the draft with at least 1 SEC player selected.
The last time a round of the draft was held without an SEC player being picked was the second round of the 1993 draft. At that time, the SEC consisted of just 12 teams.
For those keeping score at home, that was 32 drafts ago. That’s a lot of years, a lot of drafts, and a lot of dreams made possible.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
