Once college football’s formidable force, the SEC is facing a new reality. How NIL, the transfer portal, and CFP expansion leveled the field.
We’re just over a week away from the College Football Playoff national championship game, the third edition in the competition’s current 12-team era. And among the six finalists, none have been from the Southeastern Conference. It’s an unthinkable stat, considering that prior to the 2023 season, the SEC had won four straight nattys and 13 of the last 17 titles. It’s the first time an SEC team hasn’t won a national title over a three-year period since 2002.
Since the CFP expanded to 12 teams, the SEC went 2-3 in the playoffs in 2024, with both wins coming from conference newcomer Texas, and 3-5 in 2025, with two of those wins coming in games between SEC teams (Alabama–Oklahoma, Ole Miss–Georgia). The Big Ten has won the first two national championships under CFP expansion and will have one team in the title game on Jan. 19.
So, what’s happened to the SEC that it’s lost its dominant position over the rest of college football in the age of NIL and revenue sharing?
Talent is more evenly distributed
Conferences can only win 13 national championships in 17 years if there are elite teams at the top of the conference every year, according to Chris Vannini, The Athletic‘s senior college football writer. And in the NIL and transfer portal era, when roughly a third of all college football players are looking to transfer each year, Alabama and Georgia can no longer stock a depth chart with NFL Draft-level talent. It changes how teams coach and talk to players because things are more volatile and less stable year to year.
“They used to be able to collect and hold on to all of the talent, and can no longer do that,” Vannini told Boardroom. “You’re not going to sign a five-star running back, and he waits two years on the bench for his time to then play. He’s going to go somewhere else where he can play. And so the SEC got closer from top to bottom within the league.”
It’s allowed a school like Ole Miss to build a more talented roster and convince its players that because of the 12-team playoff, it just needs to finish in the top five of the SEC and it’ll get into the CFP and be able to reel off a few wins in a row and compete for a championship. If there were a four-team playoff, Georgia would’ve been in the semifinals and the Rebels wouldn’t have gotten a shot to defeat the Bulldogs in the postseason after losing to UGA during the regular season.
Tennessee was able to amass enough talent to make the CFP last season, its first postseason opportunity to win a title since the Vols defeated Florida State to win the 1998 national championship. Texas A&M made its first-ever playoff appearance this season as the Aggies look for their first national title since 1939. Even Vanderbilt and Missouri have won more as the talent gap has narrowed in the SEC. While teams like Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State still sign the best recruiting classes, the amount of turnover on teams because of the portal makes high school recruiting and scouting less important than ever.
“The playing field has leveled in the SEC,” Vannini said. “It’s hard to be dominant at the top right now.”
Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.
More schools are big spenders
Whether SEC schools were paying players under the table while other conferences were not is something I won’t speculate on, but new revenue-sharing rules require schools to pay up to $20.5 million on student-athletes, with football players receiving a large share of those funds. Now, other schools in the Big Ten or elsewhere can get players they may not have had in the past, Vannini said.
Indiana can now spend competitively with other schools and has a roster that can compete with any team in the country. Oregon and Texas Tech, which just landed top transfer portal star quarterback Brendan Sorsby for an NIL deal approaching $6 million, now have high-spending rosters.
“Players were getting paid under the table the entire history of college football,” Vannini said, “but it was no secret that some schools in the SEC were doing it a bit more than others.”
After years of starting at Georgia, Miami was able to spend big and bring quarterback Carson Beck over from the Bulldogs. Indiana was able to bring Fernando Mendoza over from Cal and win a Heisman trophy. The portal has brought free agency to college football, allowing schools that spend to acquire premium talent more quickly each year.
The Big Ten has perfected the SEC model
Now that the Big Ten can pay players with rich boosters and alumni helping out, schools are getting players who likely would’ve gone to the SEC. Schools like Indiana, Ohio State, Oregon, and Michigan represent this year’s college football elite.
“It’s a league that has become what the SEC used to be in that it’s very top-heavy,” Vannini said. “There are a couple of teams at the top that are way better than everybody else in the league.”
If the SEC has struggled in the CFP and the Big Ten is the better-performing conference of late, should the conference still get four at-large teams in the tournament like it did this season?
“That’s what a lot of other conferences would say as well,” Vannini said.
And with the SEC going to nine conference games instead of eight, it will be harder to know how different conferences truly stack up against each other without inter-conference measuring stick-type contests. What’s happened is that the SEC teams are always ranked high at the beginning of the season because of their reputation, and then they beat each other within the conference. But since there are only nine conference games a year and 16 SEC teams, you get teams like Texas A&M that make the playoff with a strong record but without having played the other four SEC teams that reached the CFP. And then, when A&M and Alabama combine for six points in losses to Miami and Indiana, you wonder whether schools like Oklahoma and Alabama should have been included over Notre Dame or BYU.
“Sometimes we’re just going off our preconceived notions,” Vannini said. “We don’t really know how good all of these teams are anymore because schedules within the conferences can be so uneven. It’s very hard to evaluate teams consistently.”
Yet, regardless of how far the SEC may end up falling as a conference, the way the CFP is structured won’t change any time soon.
SEC still in the driver’s seat
The SEC and Big Ten still maintain majority control of the College Football Playoff, including tournament format changes moving forward like how many teams will participate, seeding, automatic qualifiers, and at-large bid processes.
“They have control over the CFP because the other conferences granted them that ability,” Vannini said. “They can’t make all the rules, but they both have a very outsized influence in what those rules are. And [SEC Commissioner] Greg Sankey is very outspoken about those things.”
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti hasn’t been as vocal and public about exerting his influence as Sankey, and until that changes, the SEC is going to have a disproportionate amount of teams in the CFP regardless of the conference’s strength. But right now, the SEC’s top teams aren’t as dominant as they used to be. As Vanini pointed out, the ACC isn’t as strong because perennial powerhouses like Miami, Florida State, and Clemson aren’t as consistently strong as they once were. The Big 12 has depth, but won’t be perceived as strong without a consistently dominant powerhouse.
“The SEC right now doesn’t really have top programs that can carry the banner because it’s so much more even within that league now,” he said.
And as talent and teams become more even due to the transfer portal and every team being able to pay its players, the SEC just is no longer what it used to be as the college football universe undergoes as much change as it has in its storied history.
Read More:
Now That Paramount Has Outbid Netflix, What’s the Plan for Warner Bros.?
Inside the Making of the Coolest Golf Collab of the Year (So Far)
Shaun White’s Second Act: Redefining the Business of Snowboarding
Beyond the Game: Chris Paul, Candace Parker, and Kristyn Cook on Legacy & Leadership
Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao Set For Rematch on Netflix
