It is the last week of July, the calendar has finally consented to turning toward football season, and the SEC has already provided enough material to make a reasonable person question whether any of this is being administered by adults.
Start with Tennessee, because Tennessee always has something going on. The NCAA dropped a two-game suspension on linebacker Arion Carter this week for accepting a $427 flight from an agent during the NFL pre-draft process last December. Carter hurt himself training, pulled out of the draft before the deadline, paid the full amount back in January, made the Dean's List, and is returning for his senior season. The NCAA's considered institutional response was: still suspended. Two games. Josh Heupel put out a statement that read like a man trying very hard not to throw his laptop through a window — "We disagree with the NCAA's ruling" — and noted that Carter will proudly graduate in public health in August. Tennessee originally got hit with a three-game suspension, appealed, and got it knocked to two. So the system is working, technically. Meanwhile, the same sport where schools are legally handing players millions in NIL deals looked at a kid who accepted less than a round-trip Spirit Airlines ticket, paid it back, and said: sit the first two games. Against Furman and Georgia Tech, which, fine, but the principle of the thing is unhinged. The NCAA released a statement noting that "rules are clear." Sure. So is the comedy.
Elsewhere in the SEC extended universe: Jeremiah Smith, the best wide receiver in college football and arguably the best player alive, showed up to Big Ten Media Days in Chicago and quietly exploded every Alabama fan's brain. "Growing up my dream school was Alabama when Nick Saban was there," Smith told reporters. "They wasn't recruiting me, though. It is what it is." Smith committed to Ohio State in December 2022, a full year before signing day, and Alabama apparently looked at the No. 1 recruit in the 2024 class — a South Florida kid who grew up watching Amari Cooper, Jerry Jeudy, and Calvin Ridley run routes in Tuscaloosa — and concluded there was no point chasing him. The guy who won the Biletnikoff, helped Ohio State win a national title, and is about to spend one final season making defenses look foolish said he would have walked through fire to wear Crimson. Kalen DeBoer is now the one answering questions about Alabama's receiver depth. Incredible. Historic, even.
And then, reliably, the internet rediscovered something it already knew and acted like it was breaking news: ESPN owns the broadcast rights to the SEC and also rates SEC strength of schedule very favorably. Multiple adults expressed genuine outrage this week, posting about it as if ESPN's financial entanglement with the conference were a recent development rather than a foundational feature of the sport's media landscape. "ESPN should not have a hand in ranking teams if they have a financial interest in the broadcast rights," one man posted earnestly. "Yet no team from the SEC has made a national championship in three years," fired back another, as if the injury were the ranking and not the scheduling format nobody can agree on. Paul Finebaum called the proposed 24-team playoff "a terrible move" from the sidelines, which is the most comforting constant this sport has left.
Five weeks to kickoff. The NCAA is very much in charge. Alabama whiffed on a generational talent. ESPN likes the SEC. Everything is exactly as it should be.
