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Why the SEC is not the best football conference anymore
Nick Saban is the only current coach in the SEC to win a national title. Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Why the SEC is not the best football conference anymore

We are at the doorstep of the 2017-2018 college football season, which means it's time to size up who the power teams are and who are the power conferences. Per usual, we have already been hearing the debates of the "Alabama is the best team" narrative. Can anyone beat Alabama? If anyone can, it would be one of those other great SEC teams that could do it, right?

For the better part of a decade, we've lived in a world where it was common knowledge that the Southeastern Conference was the best college football league out there, and it wasn't close. From 2006 to 2012, an SEC team won all seven championships, and in 2011 both teams in the title game hailed from the conference. Every NFL Draft was loaded with SEC talent, and the league boasted an impressive roster of elite coaches.

That's not the case anymore. Yes, the SEC is still a very good league and still in the conversation as the best. However, it is no longer a foregone conclusion, and people who mention another league shouldn't be made to feel foolish. This isn't your older brother's Southeastern Conference.

Here are five reasons why the SEC can no longer make the claim as the undisputed best in the land:

Championship coaches are gone

Alabama's Nick Saban is regarded as the best in his profession. He's one heck of recruiter, one heck of a coach and a guy who has build his program into a buzz saw every year. He deserves all the recognition, and Alabama is worthy of all the accolades thrust upon it. However, he really no longer has any peers in the conference.

Urban Meyer left Florida and is now at Ohio State. Les Miles was fired from LSU. Gene Chizik was fired by Auburn. Steve Spurrier retired. In fact, with Bob Stoops's sudden retirement from Oklahoma, there are only four current head coaches (Saban, Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, Dabo Swinney) who have won a National Championship, and only Saban resides in the SEC. There are a lot of good, talented, young coaches in the league as well as a few retreads (only Saban and Mississippi State's Dan Mullen have been with their schools since before 2012), yet put them all together and they cannot match what Saban has accomplished. He has no peer in the conference.

Look at the Big Ten with Meyer, Jim Harbaugh, Mark Dantonio and even Lovie Smith (well, he has been to a Super Bowl). Or the ACC where Fisher and Swinney have championships. The SEC just doesn't have that depth at head coach, and no one in the SEC can sit at Saban's table yet.

The ACC has become a threat


Dabo Swinney and Clemson proved the ACC's worth by defeating Alabama to win the National Championship. Joshua S. Kelly-USA TODAY Sports

The ACC and SEC have quite a history together — they used to share the Southern Conference until half the schools left to form the Southeastern Conference — and an interesting rivalry. In the South, the SEC was the football conference while the ACC was the basketball league. When the ACC was proactive with expansion over the last 15 years, it was still laughable to think it could be a power in football. Well, now it is.

Since the SEC's title dominance ended, the ACC has won two of the four championships. The conference has had two of the four Heisman Trophy winners. It has the reigning football champion and Heisman winner. The ACC joins the SEC and the Big Ten as the only conferences to have a team in all three of the College Football Playoffs.

What about head to head? Last year, the ACC went 10-4 against the SEC, including a shocking 4-1 record in postseason games, culminating in Clemson's championship win over Alabama. Even the end-of-year rivalries are trending toward the ACC: Georgia Tech has beaten Georgia in the last two trips to Athens, Clemson has won three straight over South Carolina, Louisville has beaten Kentucky five out of six and Florida State has beaten Florida in six of the last seven years (including a 27-2 smackdown in 2015).

This year, we get that magical Alabama-Florida State matchup right off the bat to put fuel on this rivalry. The ACC has at worst stepped up to the SEC in its backyard and showed it can rumble with the best.

Alabama's dominance


Alabama has owned the SEC since Nick Saban became coach. Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

It used to be that the SEC would have multiple teams vying for the National Championship. Now it seems only one team runs the show. Alabama has dominated the league since Nick Saban has come to Tuscaloosa, especially since 2011. That fact has caused a conference that was once filled with entrenched coaches and confident programs to become a collection of schools just trying to contend with the Crimson Tide.

Les Miles won a championship at LSU and typically had his team in the top 25 but was unceremoniously fired during last season. Why? He couldn't get past Alabama. A guy like Mark Richt, who was solid even if he wasn't elite, was run out of town in Georgia so the Bulldogs could replace him with Kirby Smart, a Saban disciple. Hugh Freeze, the only SEC coach to beat Alabama in the last three years, was dumped this summer after some seedy phone calls surfaced.

The mighty SEC is only 2-25 against Alabama since 2014. Those two wins came from Ole Miss, who is having its own issues right now. Now, that alone isn't a complete indictment of the SEC (plop Alabama in the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC or Pac 12 and the Tide would probably be just as successful), but the fact that the Tide has been averaging a margin of victory of 18 points drops some jaws. I mean, Alabama does play in the rugged SEC West plus faces Tennessee every season yet is still far ahead of everyone else. In the last three SEC Championship Games, the Tide has outscored its opponents 125-44.

Since the College Football Playoff began, the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 have sent different schools to the bracket. For the SEC, it has only been Alabama.

The Big Ten is coming on strong


The Ohio State Buckeyes have challenged the likes of Alabama since Urban Meyer became coach. Matthew O'Haren-USA TODAY Sports

The Big Ten has the history, the programs and the fan bases to suck some of the oxygen out of the SEC. While the two conferences have no real geographic battles, they have history at their side, and the Big Ten is marching back to national relevance.

Urban Meyer has put Ohio State back to being an annual juggernaut while rival Michigan has enjoyed a ton more media attention due to Jim Harbaugh and his antics. James Franklin has helped turn Penn State back around. Wisconsin is always Wisconsin. Those coaches have been able to recruit nationwide, including into the SEC's footprint. For example, Ohio State has 20 players on its 2017 roster who are from states with SEC schools.

Ohio State versus Michigan is back moving the needle like no other rivalry. When the Big Ten realigned its divisions a few years ago, it created a lethal division that has the Buckeyes and Wolverines alongside Penn State and Michigan State (who has gone to a College Football Playoff already). The Big Ten East Division has surpassed the SEC West as the toughest division in college football.

Sure, the bottom half to the Big Ten cannot hang with the bottom half of the SEC — or the bottom half of most leagues, for that matter — but the power at the top can hang with anyone.

Quarterbacks


Apr 16, 2016; Athens, GA, USA; Georgia Bulldogs quarterback Jacob Eason (10) greets fans during the Dawg Walk before the spring game at Sanford Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports USA TODAY Sports

Since Tennessee's Peyton Manning went No. 1 overall in the 1998 NFL Draft, the SEC has produced 10 first-round quarterbacks, and five of them — Tim Couch, Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, JaMarcus Russell, Cam Newton) —went with the top pick. However, Johnny Manziel is the lone SEC quarterback to go in the first round since Newton went No. 1 overall in 2011.  In fact, the only quarterback the SEC has produced of any note in that time is Mississippi State's Dak Prescott in 2016.

Meanwhile, quarterbacks are all over the place in college football. The Pac-12 boasts a great pair of QBs in Los Angeles with UCLA's Josh Rosen and USC's Sam Darnold while Jake Browning returns to Washington. The ACC brings back Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson and Florida State's Deondre Francois a year after filling the draft with signal callers. There are guys like Wyoming's Josh Allen, South Florida's Quinton Flowers, Toledo's Logan Woodside and Houston's Kyle Allen that lie outside the Power 5 conferences.

Who are the top SEC quarterbacks? Alabama's Jalen Hurts, who really didn't wow anyone with his arm? Florida's Malik Zaire, who transferred in from Notre Dame? Can Jarrett Stidham, who joins Auburn for his third school in three years, make the most of this opportunity? Will Georgia's Jacob Eason improve after a lackluster freshman campaign? There are a lot of questions at the quarterback position this year in the SEC.

More must-reads:

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