Happy Monday. It is May. Nobody has played a game since January. And yet somehow the SEC has already generated enough content to fuel a full season of sports radio meltdowns. Buckle up.
Let's start in Tuscaloosa, where the trauma of Indiana's 38-3 Rose Bowl demolition is still very much an open wound. Kalen DeBoer got handed an $87.5 million extension this offseason — a massive vote of confidence from Alabama's administration and an equally massive target painted directly on his khakis. Joel Klatt went on The Next Round and, when asked if Alabama improved from Year 1 to Year 2 under DeBoer, answered simply: "No." He pointed out that the Tide ranked somewhere around 120th in yards per carry and added the line of the offseason: "When you get into the playoffs and you don't have a run game and you're 120-whatever in yards per carry, guess what you can't do against Indiana — fake it." That is going to leave a mark. SEC Mike followed up on That SEC Podcast with a blunt ultimatum for DeBoer: "We ain't putting up with this." Meanwhile, one Alabama fan blogger at 953 The Bear has already declared the 2026 season officially dead, arguing the extension stripped DeBoer of competitive hunger. Sir, it is May 11th. The real kicker is that the concern isn't entirely unhinged — Alabama's offense enters the fall ranked 96th nationally in returning production, having lost nine offensive starters including quarterback Ty Simpson. The defense looks loaded. The offense looks like a construction site. Year 3 or bust, and Bama fans have made clear they are not prepared to hear the phrase "building year" in Tuscaloosa.
Meanwhile, the most electric recruiting story in the country right now involves a Canadian teenager in Chattanooga who is making grown men on SEC message boards write novellas. Five-star running back David Gabriel Georges — from Baylor School, originally from Canada — bench presses 375 lbs, power cleans 315, and last week posted a 725-lb trap bar deadlift. For context, Derrick Henry's famous high school trap bar deadlift was 655 lbs. Henry, who once ran for over 2,000 yards in a single NFL season, is getting lapped by a guy who hasn't graduated high school yet. Georges is down to Tennessee, Ohio State, Georgia, and Ole Miss, with official visits lined up through June. Ohio State got so nervous they dispatched their entire offensive coaching staff to Chattanooga on Monday to visit him in person. Tennessee fans are vibrating at a frequency only dogs can hear — Georges is from their own state and Josh Heupel has made him the program's top priority. Ole Miss fans are banking on Lane Kiffin, now in his first year in Baton Rouge at LSU, having spooked the Oxford staff enough that they'll close hard on Georges to prove they're not lost without him. Georgia fans are doing their usual thing of acting quietly inevitable in a way that is indistinguishable from coping. The visits start May 29. June is going to be unhinged.
And because no week in the SEC is complete without Greg Sankey reminding everyone that he is the only adult in any room, the College Football Playoff expansion saga drags on. Sankey wants 16 teams. The Big Ten wants 24. The ACC, Big 12, Notre Dame, and — I promise this is real — the White House have all reportedly lined up behind the 24-team model. Sankey appeared on the Finebaum show and said the quiet part loud: "There's not a lot of research into what the media marketplace's interest is in a 24-team playoff." When asked later whether he and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti could reach a deal by December, Sankey offered a measured "we'll see" followed by roughly 20 seconds of dead silence. That silence contained more information than anything else said at those meetings. His own SEC coaches and ADs are quietly lobbying for 24 teams, which means Sankey is now fighting a war on every front simultaneously. This is what happens when your conference stops winning national titles and Indiana takes the trophy: people stop returning your calls.
