Happy Sunday. The NFL Draft is over, the SEC's feelings are hurt, and we are all going to pretend this is fine. We are not fine.

Let's start with the elephant in the room wearing a Big Ten hoodie. For nineteen consecutive years, the SEC owned Round 1 of the NFL Draft like it was a beach house with a private dock. That streak is dead. The Big Ten put ten players in the first round this year. The SEC? Seven. Seven. Its lowest haul since 2015. And look, the conference recovered — SEC brass will gleefully point out that the conference broke a record with 87 total selections across all seven rounds — but don't let them gaslight you. Winning the participation trophy after losing the main event is a time-honored tradition of programs that also hang banners for preseason wins. The "It Just Means More" crowd spent Thursday night in Pittsburgh refreshing their feeds and watching Ohio State players get called four, five, seven times before an SEC name. The coping mechanisms on fan forums reached clinical levels. One guy on SECRant started an argument about who has the worst fanbase, which is the football internet equivalent of lighting yourself on fire to stay warm.

Meanwhile, Mel Kiper Jr. had opinions — shocking, I know — and this time they were aimed squarely at Ole Miss. The 49ers kicked off Day 2 by taking WR De'Zhaun Stribling at No. 33 overall, and Kiper went full scorched earth, noting Stribling was No. 73 on his personal board and the 12th-best receiver available. "For the next 20-30 picks, teams were taking guys ranked ahead of him," Kiper wrote, basically implying San Francisco had selected a man from a hat. The 49ers' GM fired back with the word "conviction" — the last refuge of every front office that just reached — and Ole Miss fans, bless their hearts, immediately reposted every highlight reel from Stribling's career as if ESPN's draft oracle would be swayed by a 15-second YouTube clip. He won't be. He never is.

But the real clown car of the week has Tuscaloosa plates. Alabama extended Kalen DeBoer through 2033 at $12.5 million per year, a $2 million raise that makes him one of the five highest-paid coaches in college football — behind LSU's Lane Kiffin, Georgia's Kirby Smart, Indiana's Curt Cignetti (lol, that's real, look it up), and tied with Ryan Day. If Alabama fires DeBoer during the 2026 season, they owe him $67.5 million. Sixty. Seven. Point. Five. Million. Dollars. For a guy who just watched Indiana dismantle his team 38-3 in the Rose Bowl and got blown out by Georgia in the SEC title game. The Alabama fanbase, to its credit, was only moderately unhinged about this — a baseline of unhinged being their natural resting state. The actual question no one wants to answer: DeBoer returns five starters in 2026, is heading into his second consecutive quarterback battle, and has a running game that ranked 125th nationally last season. That $12.5M buys a lot of uncertainty.

And speaking of financial recklessness, Lane Kiffin rode into Baton Rouge and immediately started spending like a man who found someone else's wallet. LSU reportedly invested $5 million alone to land QB Sam Leavitt from Arizona State — the crown jewel of what's being called the No. 1-ranked transfer portal class in the country. LSU and Texas are each estimated to have spent close to or over $40 million on their rosters for 2026. Forty. Million. Dollars. On college kids playing football. Paul Finebaum, who has built a career out of stating the obvious with grave authority, went on his show and said he wouldn't pick a single SEC team to win the national championship this year. He is correct. The Big Ten has won the last three. The SEC is out here paying Lane Kiffin the GDP of a small island nation to fix that, and honestly? Same energy as hiring a flamethrower to fix a gas leak. We love it here.