It is July 16. There are 51 days until kickoff. Nobody has played a single snap of football. And yet the SEC has already generated enough content to sustain several medium-sized podcasts, two dozen takes from analysts who are absolutely too online, and at least one Auburn fan crying into a bowl of War Eagle cereal.
Let's start where the Iron Bowl never actually ends: the recruiting trail. On Tuesday, 2027 wide receiver Cedrick Simmons of Selma, Alabama — a kid who caught 106 passes for 2,192 yards and 20 touchdowns last season, leading the state in receiving — flipped his commitment from Auburn to Alabama. Alabama football just landed a commitment from Class of 2027 wide receiver Cedrick Simmons, who just a few weeks ago announced that he would be attending Auburn. He had been an Auburn Tiger since June 23. That's 22 days of Auburn commitment. Twenty-two days. The Tigers barely had time to put his name in the graphic. Simmons explained his decision simply: 'Being able to play and show out on the same team I rooted for all my life.' So Alabama won by being... Alabama. Groundbreaking strategy. Someone alert the coaching staff.
The Auburn message boards, naturally, are completely fine about this.
Meanwhile, over in the larger coaching discourse, Kirby Smart spent this week watching his throne get taken. Smart has been unseated, for this year at least, by Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, who just happens to be the coach of the defending national champions from Bloomington — in both the USA Today and ESPN coach rankings. Cignetti received five first-place votes and 94 total points to edge Smart's four first-place votes and 90 points. Two years ago, Cignetti was not ranked at all. The Georgia fanbase is currently processing this like it's a stage-one grief situation: denial, bargaining, posting SP+ charts at people, and insisting that sustained SEC dominance should count for more than winning the actual championship. Smart's trophy case includes two national championships, four SEC titles and five College Football Playoff appearances — and yet here we are, with Curt Cignetti sitting on top of the sport like he's been there his whole career. Which, to be fair, he kind of has been. Just nobody was watching.
Smart can console himself with the recruiting trail, where Georgia at least isn't embarrassing. The same cannot be said for Alabama. Alabama still has just 13 commits with the end of June approaching, and only one Top247 prospect is currently committed — five-star quarterback Elijah Haven — and Alabama's average rating per commit ranks 10th in the SEC. Tenth. In the SEC. Alabama. Tennessee ranks No. 40 nationally while Alabama sits at No. 47 — which, for a program that hasn't finished outside the top five nationally since Nick Saban arrived in 2007, is the kind of number that makes rivals screenshot and post without comment. Kalen DeBoer is finding out, with some urgency, that 'Alabama' sells itself somewhat less automatically than it did three coaching regimes ago.
And then there's Lane Kiffin, who has not coached a single game at LSU but has already promised a national championship on a podcast, saying 'I don't know how fast it's going to happen, but we're going to win a national championship.' Cool. Normal thing to guarantee. ESPN analyst Dusty Dvoracek put the stakes plainly: 'If they don't make the College Football Playoff this year, people are going to be freaking out.' LSU fans do not do 'freaking out' mildly. They do it operatically, at volume, on multiple platforms simultaneously.
The SEC will hold its annual media days event on Monday, July 20 through Thursday, July 23 at the Tampa Marriott Water Street and JW Marriott in Tampa, Florida — the first time the event has ever been held in the state. Four days from now, every head coach in this conference walks up to a podium and says things they don't mean in front of people who will pretend to believe them. Kiffin will be the main attraction. He always is. Somehow, impossibly, that feels earned.
