Welcome to July, when the SEC collectively abandons all pretense of offseason dignity and just... recruits.
As the calendar flipped from June to July, Saturday Down South dropped the snapshot nobody in Aggieland asked for because they already knew: Texas A&M entered the month as the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation, per the 247Sports Composite. Twenty-five verbal pledges. Six five-stars. Eleven four-stars. A blue-chip ratio of 68 percent. Mike Elko — the guy everyone called "just a coordinator type" when he took the job — is running what amounts to a small private army of elite prospects, and somehow no one in College Station is connecting the dots between being perpetual recruiting champions and never actually winning the thing. We have been here before, Aggies. We have all been here before.
Now before the Aggie faithful fire up the 'we're different this time' generators, let's pivot to a story that is genuinely unhinged: four-star 2028 quarterback Kingston Preyear from Alexander City, Alabama, has narrowed his finalist list to three schools. All three are in the SEC. Alabama. Florida. Vanderbilt. His commitment date is July 10 — nine days away. A 2028 prospect. Vanderbilt has a legitimate shot at landing him. Read that sentence again. Clark Lea has turned the Commodores from a national punchline into a program that can actually sit at the big-kids table for a top-100 quarterback, which is either an inspiring story about building the right way or evidence that the portal economy has completely broken the laws of college football physics. Probably both.
Alabama fans are cautiously optimistic, which for Alabama fans is the emotional equivalent of a full-blown panic attack. DeBoer already has 2027 five-star Elijah Haven committed at quarterback, plus Trent Seaborn, plus depth behind them. The room is getting crowded. If Preyear picks Florida, Tuscaloosa Twitter will spend six months explaining why it was never really that big a deal anyway.
Florida, by the way, is having a Moment — capital M. They're ranked No. 6 nationally in recruiting entering July, first-year coach Jon Sumrall is generating genuine optimism, and they're about to tear down and rebuild The Swamp in a $1.45 billion renovation that the university calls the most expensive stadium project in college football history. Construction begins after the 2026 season. Florida's athletic director called it their "$75 million ATM machine" and said the rebuild will nearly double that annual take. Nothing will prepare Gator Nation for what inevitably goes sideways. This is Florida. Something always does.
Meanwhile, the Steve Sarkisian basket-weaving saga refuses to die quietly, which honestly tracks. Sark told USA Today that "all you have to do is take basket weaving and you can get an Ole Miss degree," later calling it a "poor choice of words" at SEC spring meetings after the league declined to fine him. Lane Kiffin — Ole Miss's ex, now running LSU — simultaneously told Vanity Fair that recruiting in Oxford was harder because parents raised diversity concerns about the campus, then walked that back too. Stephen A. Smith devoted three minutes of First Take to calling the whole thing "low" and "classless." Ole Miss went to the College Football Playoff semifinals. Texas missed it. Sark is now coaching the guy whose grandfather is an Ole Miss legend. And the two teams play in Austin on October 24. There is not enough basket-weaving class enrollment in the world to paper over how that game is going to feel.
Elsewhere in SEC power-broker land, Greg Sankey is still standing alone against a 24-team playoff while the Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, and the coaches association have all lined up behind expansion. The CFP stays at 12 for 2026. The SEC blocking a larger playoff might be the most on-brand thing the conference has ever done. The league that invented "It Just Means More" apparently also believes "less is more." The season has not started and everyone is already exhausted and furious and completely unable to stop paying attention. As always.
