Let's check in on the Southeastern Conference, the most important, most storied, most insufferably self-promotional football conference in the history of organized sport, currently experiencing what clinical professionals might call a full psychological break.
For the third straight season, no SEC team played in the national championship game. Michigan. Ohio State. Indiana — Indiana — went a surreal 16-0 and hoisted a trophy that, by all rights, should have been impossible for a school whose football program spent most of the 2010s being used as a bye week. The Big Ten has now claimed three consecutive titles from three different programs, and the SEC's response has been to stand in the mirror, point at its reflection, and whisper but we have the culture. Meanwhile, Paul Finebaum — the SEC's own in-house therapist and chaos goblin — went on his show and said, flatly, he would not pick a single SEC team to win the national championship this year. Read that sentence again. Finebaum. Would not pick. An SEC team. The man who has spent thirty years mainlining SEC content like it was oxygen is tapping out. Kirby Smart, to his credit and everyone's horror, publicly admitted the SEC has fallen behind the Big Ten. Kirby Smart said that. Out loud. With words. In April.
Nowhere is the conference's current spiritual condition more on display than in Baton Rouge, where Lane Kiffin — fresh off describing his former employer Ole Miss as "the last place" with the energy of a man describing a Waffle House he once got food poisoning at — has constructed a $40 million NFL franchise masquerading as a college football team. His starting quarterback, Sam Leavitt, spent essentially the entirety of spring practice watching from the sideline in tennis shoes, rehabbing the foot surgery he had in November. Leavitt managed exactly eight snaps in 7-on-7 during the final closed practice. Eight. Snaps. LSU reportedly spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million building this roster, and the crown jewel was standing on the sideline in a helmet he did not need to be wearing, taking mental reps. Kiffin, being Kiffin, found a way to be enthusiastic about it. "He loves to work," Kiffin said. "He loves to go home at night and spend more time on football." Great! Wonderful! Does his foot love to work? Because that seems more relevant right now. When asked about corner depth, Kiffin dropped the rare honest coach assessment: nobody back there made you "feel great." Sir. You have a $40 million roster and your cornerback room doesn't make you feel great. The Tigers open against Clemson in September. Best of luck.
Meanwhile, Alabama — still processing the psychic damage of a 35-point Rose Bowl beating at the hands of those same Indiana Hoosiers — rewarded Kalen DeBoer with a seven-year contract extension worth $12.5 million annually. Alabama fans, being a perfectly rational and measured group of people, greeted the news with responses ranging from "natty or bust" to the truly unhinged "Mofo should have been docked in pay." Nick Saban, now a golf celebrity, offered his blessing in the tone of a man who just learned his house has a new owner: "I'm happy he is the coach." Thunderous. Roaring endorsement. DeBoer himself said the extension "gives the staff direction," which is a sentence that contains words but no actual information. The man is 20-8, has never broken a sweat on the sideline, and just locked in $12.5 million a year in a state where the average household income is roughly $54,000. The conference that built its brand on winners is now handing out long-term security to a coach whose program just got embarrassed by a school that, three years ago, was losing to Purdue.
Somewhere in all of this, Joel Klatt is on television issuing a Tennessee reality check, Arkansas has a new head coach nobody outside of Memphis has heard of, and the SEC is adding a ninth conference game in 2026 — because apparently playing eight brutal conference games and still not reaching a title game for three years wasn't enough suffering. The SEC is going to grind itself into powder, sell 72 conference matchups as a product, and someone on Reddit is going to call it the greatest thing to happen to college football since the forward pass.
The SEC still matters. It will always matter. The NFL Draft just set a new record with 87 SEC selections — a new all-time high — and the talent is unquestionable. But talent and trophies are different things, and right now the conference that used to own both is standing in the driveway at 2 AM, yelling about who it used to be. We all know that guy. We are watching that guy in real time. And it is, as always, extremely entertaining.
