It’s done.
Gone are the days in college football when the SEC was shoved down everyone’s throats for six months out of the year after the conference finished 4-10 (.286) in the postseason.
Three of those wins came at the hands of either its own conference or a Group of Five school (Alabama over Oklahoma, Ole Miss over Georgia and Tulane). The only team to win a bowl game against another Power Four conference was Texas in a 41-27 win over Michigan — whose coach was arrested two weeks before the game.
Texas A&M, which was 11-0 going into the final weekend of the regular season and had national pundits talking about it as the next super team, didn’t even score a touchdown in its home stadium in a 10-3 loss to Miami in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
Vanderbilt complained and gripped that it didn’t get into the playoff, and its quarterback Diego Pavia made a fool of himself at the Heisman Trophy ceremony. To its credit, Vanderbilt played in its bowl game, where it gave up 34 points to Iowa in a 34-27 loss.
Illinois, which had half of its secondary out, found a way to beat Tennessee 30-28 in the Music City Bowl. Houston, a middle-to-lower-tier Big 12 program, won a back-and-forth game against LSU 38-35.
Virginia, whose offense cost it a spot in the College Football Playoff, beat Missouri 13-7. Wake Forest smoked a bad Mississippi State team that had no business being in a bowl game, winning 43-29.
But no result was worse than the Rose Bowl.
Alabama, fresh off a non-impressive win over another mid-tier SEC team in the first round, went to Pasadena to face No. 1 Indiana. We were told this game would be a battle. Indiana hadn’t played anyone of Alabama’s caliber. Indiana didn’t have Alabama’s athletes. All the usual noise.
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti looked into the camera on the Rose Bowl sideline and essentially said, “Hold my beer.”
What followed was an absolute whipping in a 38-3 loss that wasn’t even as close as the score indicated. Indiana looked like the far superior team, and the two programs didn’t appear to belong on the same field.
Ole Miss, after beating a Group of Five team in Tulane and playing out of its mind to upset Georgia, headed to Phoenix to face No. 10-seeded Miami. The Hurricanes were the first Power Four team outside the SEC the Rebels had faced in the playoff.
Miami dominated the first half. Ole Miss, helped by Miami’s inability to put the game away, made it a thriller late. But anyone watching honestly could see the better team won — and it was Miami.
The point of all of this is simple: The SEC’s reign is officially over.
This postseason should force some uncomfortable questions heading into next season.
Does the preseason SEC favorite automatically deserve the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll? Does the SEC runner-up have to be in the College Football Playoff? Maybe winning overtime games at Kentucky or needing miracle plays at South Carolina doesn’t mean the league is deep. Maybe the teams needing those miracle plays just aren’t that good.
To make matters worse, the 2026 College Football Playoff national championship game will be the third consecutive season an SEC team failed to reach it.
From Lane Kiffin calling the SEC “a different league,” to Greg Sankey suggesting seven conference teams deserved playoff bids, to coaches and media figures insisting SEC schedules should outweigh on-field results, the messaging was consistent and loud.
You can talk that much — but eventually, you have to back it up.
The expanded playoff forced accountability. It removed the protective framing that insulated SEC teams from comparison and placed them directly against the rest of the sport. When that happened, the league looked human.
We’ve seen this before.
In 2023, Alabama jumped undefeated Florida State for a four-team playoff spot simply because it won the SEC. That Alabama team lost to Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
In 2017, Alabama didn’t win its conference championship game and still got in over Ohio State, which had just beaten No. 4 Wisconsin to win the Big Ten. Alabama went on to win the national title — but it got in largely because of the patch on its jersey.
After this season, hopefully members of the media — especially national media and television personalities — take a step back from drooling over the SEC and simply cover college football.
None of this means the SEC is a bad conference. But the top of the league is equal to the top of the Big Ten, ACC and Big 12. That was proven this season. The middle of the conference is equal, too.
It’s OK to say Alabama stinks — just like it’s OK to say Michigan does.
Let’s try to do it right next year.
