Let's start with the most important number in SEC football right now: 1,200. That is, roughly, the number of days since an SEC program has won a national championship. Keep that in your back pocket.

Now let's talk about the other number that every SEC Twitter account has been force-feeding you like a foie gras goose: 87. As in, the SEC sent a record 87 players to the 2026 NFL Draft, shattering its own record of 79. Alabama and Texas A&M tied atop the conference with 10 picks each, and Georgia came in third with eight. Greg Sankey's PR apparatus is somewhere in Birmingham right now having the time of its life printing "IT JUST MEANS MORE" on foam fingers.

Here is the part they are leaving out of the graphic: for 19 consecutive years, the SEC had the most first-round picks. In 2026, the Big Ten ended that streak. The Big Ten had 10 first-rounders. The SEC had 7 — its lowest first-round output since 2015. As Stewart Mandel put it with the precision of a man who has watched way too much football: "The Big Ten is stronger at the top. The SEC is deeper." That is a polite way of saying the SEC is producing a lot of fourth-round offensive linemen while the Big Ten is producing No. 1 overall picks.

Speak of which. Over the first five picks of the 2026 draft, players from Ohio State, Texas Tech, Notre Dame, and Indiana — yes, Indiana — heard their names called. Only one SEC player went in the first 10 picks: LSU corner Mansoor Delane at No. 6. Indiana. The school whose fan base spent the 1990s debating whether to make the basketball team pay rent at the football stadium. They had the No. 1 pick in the draft and the Heisman winner. The SEC faithful are out here celebrating raw volume like a team that lost the game but won the third-quarter stat sheet.

And since we brought up Texas A&M's program-record 10 picks: we still have questions about how the Aggies can have that many players drafted and still score only three points in a playoff game. Ten picks! Three points! Kyle Field: the most expensive batting cage in America!

But the real story of this draft week — the story that has broken the internet, healed the sick, and given every football podcast an episode they did not have to try hard for — is Diego Pavia. The controversial Vanderbilt passer became the first Heisman Trophy finalist to go undrafted since 2014. The man who led Vanderbilt to its first 10-win season in program history, who threw for 3,500 yards and ran for 862 more in the SEC, who beat Alabama, who made Neyland Stadium go quiet — sat by the phone for three days and heard nothing.

The reasons are not mysterious. Pavia measured at a significantly shorter 5-foot-9 and 7/8 inches at the combine, and his off-field file reads like a highlight reel of bad decisions: while at New Mexico State, Pavia famously trespassed at rival New Mexico's practice field and urinated on it. After losing the Heisman to Indiana's Fernando Mendoza, Pavia was spotted in a New York club next to a sign that read "F--- Indiana" and posted on Instagram, "F--- ALL THE VOTERS." He apologized. He unapologized. He apologized again.

Then, after going undrafted, Pavia posted on Instagram, "F*** the NFL, I write my own path" — a post he quickly deleted. He has since accepted a minicamp tryout invite from the Baltimore Ravens. He has also been placed on the CFL's Winnipeg Blue Bombers negotiation list. Skip Bayless, who graduated from Vanderbilt and has spent decades being wrong about things on television, took to social media to declare that Pavia "deserved better than a minicamp tryout with the Ravens." When Skip Bayless is your loudest advocate, it is time to take the CFL call.

Meanwhile, Lane Kiffin and LSU are actively trying to flip five-star wide receiver Easton Royal away from Texas, because nothing says "new job, new me" like immediately starting drama with the conference's most expensive program. Kiffin has been at LSU for approximately four months and has already assembled a No. 1-ranked transfer portal class including quarterback Sam Leavitt, for whom LSU reportedly paid $5 million. It's going to be an extremely normal 2026 in Baton Rouge.

Anyway. The SEC had 87 draft picks, no national title, one Heisman finalist in a Ravens tryout, and Lane Kiffin already poaching recruits. We are so back.