📡 SEC’s great college football ride over as NIL, transfer portal even the playing field - Deseret News

[SEC Sports]

SEC’s great college football ride over as NIL, transfer portal even the playing field

There is still chaos, but there is also a silver lining

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How big did ESPN crash with its unfettered bias in promoting the SEC for postseason play?

Well, it’s hovering around a face plant.

The network’s favorite horses for college football’s greatest prize have mostly faltered.

Only one SEC team is left in the playoffs.

And what this all means is the SEC has been caught by the rest of college football. It is no longer, in a competitive sense, light years or even a bright blinking stop light, ahead of the rest of the Power Four conferences.

If the ACC’s Miami beats the SEC’s Mississippi Thursday night, ESPN and the CFP committee greasing of the SEC pathway was felonious piracy of playoff money.

When the SEC loses one of its biggest foghorns in Paul Finebaum, you know that storied, propped-up league is in the doldrums and exposed in the era of NIL, where everybody else can pay their players.

Finebaum, a longtime Alabama radio host and national TV personality, went on ESPN’s “First Take” on Tuesday and admitted, even he, voted by Awful Announcing.com as the most biased personality in college football, could not defend the SEC this season and its limitless hypothetical victories.

The CFP committee gave the SEC five of the 12 playoff berths. The SEC is 2-7 in bowl games this postseason.

No. 9 Alabama, gifted a berth after almost losing to two-win (SEC) Auburn got annihilated by No. 1 seed Indiana. No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 7 Texas A&M, No. 3 Georgia have all been eliminated. Only No. 6 Mississippi remains and plays No. 10 Miami Thursday night.

“There’s no way to defend the SEC,” Finebaum told “First Take” with Stephen A Smith. “It’s been terrible.”

“I kept wrapping my arms around Alabama and saying, ‘Stephen A. remember what they did, they went through that gauntlet in the middle of the year,” said Finebaum.

“Well, a lot of those teams they beat really weren’t very good after all. They lost in bowl games, and they looked terrible. So it’s a rough year for the SEC. Ole Miss is it, regardless of the Lane Kiffin story, which I know we’re going to talk about. But if Ole Miss loses Thursday night and I’m sitting around having to defend this league to you, Stephen A. saying ‘No big deal that it’s three years without an SEC team in the national championship game’ there’s no defense. It’s been rough,” Finebaum admitted.

Writing for ESPN, longtime college football pundit Dan Wetzel put it this way:

“It’s not that the SEC isn’t still “good” or even capable of winning a national championship — Ole Miss might very well do it. Top to bottom, it might still be the best league, with the majority of schools all-in on football.

“That said, the days of complete domination, all-SEC national title games or deep, juggernaut teams are clearly gone, perhaps forever. This isn’t the same.”

What’s happened is both good and bad.

Good because college football television viewership is skyrocketing. It’s never been so popular to follow, watch and get involved in what’s going on between the sidelines.

It’s bad because of all the chaos, movement, gaudy money numbers and purchase of talent.

For the SEC, revenue sharing, NIL and the transfer portal has spread around talent to other programs and hurt the depth of their own teams.

Alabama used to be the king of talent. So was Georgia.

Now we’re seeing those storied programs get pushed around, ran past and chased down and tackled.

Illinois coach Bret Bielema told ESPN this week, “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in coaching because you know you’re on a more equal playing field. The introduction of the portal, NIL, and revenue sharing is the most game-changing development in my 32 years of coaching.

“It’s hard when you would do what you have to do as long as you possibly could and in the end, sometimes it just didn’t matter,” Bielema explained about recruiting back when he was at Arkansas and Wisconsin.

“Now you just come to work every day knowing that blue blood, red blood, orange blood, whatever, everybody’s got a chance, man.”

Before Texas Tech’s tires blew out against Oregon, we saw the Red Raiders purchase themselves a Big 12 championship and berth in the CFP.

We’ve seen Indiana, check that, Indiana, become the nation’s darling and No. 1 team in the country and favorite to win it all.

Ohio State is home. Oklahoma is home. Texas is watching from home with Georgia and Alabama and Penn State.

The door is open.

Yes, it’s all kind of a mess.

But recent chaos has become the game’s equalizer.

It has also exposed the raw brand worship and advancement of SEC teams by the media, especially ESPN, the owner of CFP television rights for all the games.

ESPN’s interest? Is it really determining a fair field? Or advancing its ratings by picking brands for increased revenue?

The fact the SEC gets an unfair advantage in preseason polls, then rides that with questionable scheduling and far too much credit for intra-conference wins, has been exposed.

It is a mess that’s taken the SEC off its high saddle ride and made the rest of the cowboys eligible to enjoy the roundup rodeo.

 

[TerryP]

The circle jerk on X.

 

[im4uainva]

Interesting, and to be expected. So, after one year it's decided that the SEC is no longer King. Give me another year or two like this year and I might halfway agree with this assessment. As of now, I'll think of this year as an anomaly. Actually, for Bama, the last two years are an anomaly to me. Time will tell.

ROLL TIDE.

 

[Rolltide24]

3 years in a row without an SEC team in the finals is noteworthy. Hard to claim we’re the best conference if we can’t get a team in the final. Probably shouldn’t have had 5 teams in the dance based on the way we played and OU played and A$M played. And then you see Vandy get beat by a supposedly weaker Iowa, UT falls to Illinois, etc. Bama and Georgia have got to find the postseason success again.

 

[Crtuneman]

You can't deny that the SEC is not what it was. Indiana and Ohio State have replaced Alabama and Georgia as the kings of college football. And with their spending on NIL and transfer portal, they're probably going to stay there. But the unspoken truth there is that in the BIG there were only 3 teams that deserved to be in the playoffs. The ACC only had one team that deserved to be there. And there might have been a case for two from the Big 12, but that was a stretch. Of the SEC teams, only one had a dubious resume. And that was Alabama, which at least won its first game. Now let's look at the playoffs. Two of the SEC teams were eliminated by other SEC teams. A&M lost to a Miami team that is currently playing the best ball of anyone not named Indiana and is one game away from a title. Ole Miss played a great game against Miami but came up just a little short. And yes the Bama beat down was embarrassing, but Indiana is a juggernaut and Bama is a mediocre team that managed to do just enough to get by. So while there are no SEC teams in the title game, I guarantee you that no one outside of the SEC was going to beat Indiana or Miami either. So what exactly is their point? The SEC is still one of the top two leagues in college football. It just so happens that the BIG has passed it, for now.

Now with that being said, I think Sankey dropped the ball when he chose not to get into the expansion game when the BIG was trying to build and NFL conference. Sankey took the high road and said the SEC would stand pat, they didn't need to expand. I think he should have worked harder to expand and add to the SEC bank roll. Now the SEC is running in second place and it's going to take a lot of work to reclaim first.

 

[64Tide]

Who cares? What goes around comes around. ROLL TIDE!!!

 

[24and7]

On
January 3, 2026, Colin Cowherd posted on X (formerly Twitter) asking if the SEC was the "Mountain West Conference w bigger stadiums" after a weekend where the conference had a 2-7 record in games against non-SEC teams.

 

[im4uainva]

Well, one has to consider that 5 of the SEC's top teams were involved in the playoffs, so that reduces the number of better SEC teams to play in the other bowls against inferior teams. In these cases that gives the advantage to the opponents. Just saying. Unless the best SEC team wins it all, it guarantees at least five losses for our favorite Conference. So, to hell with what they say.

ROLL TIDE!

 

[Bama Guy]

Next, we'll have a draft to recruit high school players. Worst team get first choice.

 

[252BAMA]

Next, we'll have a draft to recruit high school players. Worst team get first choice.

Televised by ESPN at the home of the defending National Champion with a crowd of 50-100k in attendance.