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USA Today Sports Media Group

Sport

Pete Fiutak

SEC Media Days: 5 Key Questions. Is Bama In Trouble? Is The East Just Florida vs. Georgia?

What are the five key questions going into the season that need to be asked at SEC football media days?

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SEC Media Days
July 15-18. Hoover, AL

5. Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s the best conference in college football. So what?

It’s surprising how many fans of other leagues like to fight this.

Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Auburn. Take those seven programs and match them up against any seven in any other league.

And then add in Missouri, and Kentucky, and South Carolina, and Tennessee, and Ole Miss, and yes, Vanderbilt – who did go bowling last year – and Arkansas, and forget about it. No other league comes close.

Beyond the endless message board/social media “my conference is better than your conference” banter and debate, though, this really should matter for the College Football Playoff chase.

For one, start with the street cred of simply winning the conference title. Had Auburn been able to pull it off two seasons ago, it would’ve been the first two-loss team to get into the CFP.

Forget about what happened in the Sugar Bowl against Texas – if Georgia was good enough to push what at the time was an all-time Alabama team to the brink in the SEC Championship, even with the loss at LSU, it should’ve still been given more love in the four-best-team argument for the CFP.

The College Football Playoff committee is still a group of judges. It might not be the best of systems to go off of opinion and eye-test, but if the SEC really is the best conference in college football, it’s way past time to grade teams on a curve.

Until the rules of the CFP selection process change, just going undefeated or winning your conference championship isn’t a must – even though a Power Five conference title should be prerequisite – and the idea of including two or even three worthy SEC teams can’t be blown off.

NEXT: How much longer do we have to wait for (part one) …

4. Q: How much longer do we have to wait for Texas A&M to turn the corner?

Which program has the best combination of big name, good success, facilities and infrastructure. with the fewest amount of really, really big things to show for it – at least in the recent history of college football?

Wisconsin is up there in terms of being close to the national championship, but it’s managed to win Big Ten titles and go to several Rose Bowls over the last two decades.

UCLA is right there in a different sort of way, as is South Carolina, but overall – again, at least recently – Texas A&M probably heads the list as college football’s biggest sleeping giant.

The program counts three national titles on the resumé, but Illinois was the AP national champion in 1927, and Harvard had the better season in the split national title run in 1919. The program did have the 1939 national championship all to itself, but … 1939. That’s it for the national titles.

There’s just one top ten finish – 2012 – since 1994, and as for conference championships? It took a historic win over Kansas State to win the 1998 Big 12 title, and … that’s it since the old days of the Southwest Conference.

Jimbo Fisher has only had a year to work, and while it’s generally acknowledged that he’ll eventually get the talent level and other parts in place to be a regular in the national championship chase, that’s not a given.

Just because Texas A&M will be better, and just because it has an elite head coach, nothing is guaranteed in a division with Alabama, LSU and Auburn, and in a league as loaded as the SEC.

Just ask Michigan how easy it is to turn that championship corner.

At the very least, though, Jim Harbaugh has been able to get the Wolverines back in the discussion of big accomplishments, and Fisher will do that, too.

No one’s expecting a national title in Year Two, especially with the schedule ahead to deal with.

At Clemson. Auburn, Alabama. At Ole Miss. Mississippi State. South Carolina. At Georgia. At LSU.

Fortunately, the expectations aren’t jacked through the roof quite yet, and everything changes if Fisher’s Aggies can go into Death Valley and beat the defending national champs on September 7th. Do that, beat Auburn at home, and we’re talking about No. 2 Texas A&M facing No. 1 Alabama in College Station on October 12th.

And again, even after that there are still several brutal hurdles to overcome.

It appears to be coming, Aggie fans. A&M is positioning itself to be ready to pounce when and if the Alabama machine starts to break down, but give it another year or two.

Speaking of big, monster programs bound by absolutely nothing and have no excuse to be anything but amazing …

NEXT: How much longer do we have to wait for (part two) …

3. Q: How much longer do we have to wait for Tennessee to turn the corner?

This used to be one of the biggest powerhouses going in college football.

The program likes to count six national championships – really, though, just the 1951 version won the AP national title and the 1998 team won the BCS championship; the ones that mattered in the various eras – but it’s more than that.

The Vols won back-to-back SEC titles in 1997 and 1998, were a factor in several others since then, lost three SEC Championship games, and won nine games or more 15 times from 1989 to 2007.

From 2008 to 2018? Seven losing seasons, just two nine-win seasons, and a 12-15 record over the last two years.

Want to get uglier? 12 straight losses to Alabama, but a combined score of 454-147 – or an average of 38-12.

It’s the problem of being Tennessee. The fan base is among the biggest, best, and most demanding in college football – and it has a right to be.

Coaches have been able to bring in the talent – Butch Jones came up with a few whopper recruiting classes – and it didn’t translate into enough production. Now it’s up to no-nonsene head man Jeremy Pruitt to build off of his first year and take the Vols into the Georgia/Florida level in the SEC East by matching them on the recruiting trail, and to build up a winning identity.

Is Tennessee going to be the program with the killer defense that no one wants to face? Is it going to be the team with the dizzying array of next-level athletes and talents like the versions in the 1990s and early 2000s? Is it going to be the one that dominates the incredible home field advantage is has each and every time out? It can be all of the above, and more …

Eventually.

Tennessee will be better under Pruitt, but we’re going to have to wait for the monster to come back. The goal this year is to become more of a player, or else …

NEXT: Florida vs. Georgia is all that matters in the East … right?

2. Q: Florida vs. Georgia is all that matters in the East, right?

If might seem boring, and Kentucky fans might have a complaint after last year, but … yeah, sort of.

Florida vs. Georgia on November 2nd will have something to say about the SEC East title in some way, but it’ll take something extraordinary for the winner to not be in the SEC Championship for the fifth straight season.

Florida has beaten Vanderbilt five times in a row, and Georgia has won two straight over the Commodores and four in the last five.

2009 was the last time Kentucky beat Georgia, and before last year’s win, the Cats went decades without beating Florida.

Tennessee? The Vols have to show they can at least hang with Georgia again after getting blown out the last two seasons by a combined score of 79-12, and beating Florida is a must after losing 13 in the last 14 in the series.

South Carolina has a nice team, but it has to go to Athens, and has lost to Florida three times in the last four years.

Missouri is absolutely good enough to beat either Florida or Georgia, or both, but it’s currently ineligible to play for the SEC title.

So while the Gators and Dawgs could absolutely lose to anyone in the division, and each one has some brutal games against the West to deal with – Florida plays Auburn and at LSU, and Georgia gets at Auburn and Texas A&M – but …

Yeah, Florida vs. Georgia on November 2nd will almost certainly be for the SEC East title.

NEXT: Was the Alabama’s national title disaster the beginning of the end of the run?

1. Q: Was the Alabama’s national title disaster the beginning of the end of the run?

Of course one stunningly bad national championship shocker doesn’t mean it’s the end of an era, but in hindsight, sometimes it can the marking point when a program pivots out of the national title window.

The defending national champion Florida State team of 2000 was an overwhelming favorite to beat Oklahoma for the national championship. It was shocked 13-2 in the Orange Bowl, and the next year the Seminoles went 8-4.

It took a long run of mediocrity – at least for FSU – and the pivot from a legendary head coach to get back to national title prominence. The program didn’t win the national title again until 2013.

The phenomenal 2002 Miami team was supposed to roll past Ohio State in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, lost, and hasn’t been much of a factor in the national title chase ever since.

The powerhouse USC era under Pete Carroll got Vince Younged in the 2006 Rose Bowl, and while there were several amazing seasons after it, that’s been it for the national championship runs.

Will 44-16 be what signals the end of the epic era of Alabama dominance, or did that just anger and refocus the beast?

Assume the latter.

This is the program that got past the Kick Six to Auburn in 2013 to get to the College Football Playoff in 2014. It got over the loss to Ohio State in that CFP to beat Clemson for the 2015 national title. It also got over the heartbreaking loss to the Tigers to end the 2016 season by beating Georgia in the thrilling College Football Playoff national championship the following year.

Look no further than Clemson to know how to use a horrendous performance to springboard into something special. The offense couldn’t do anything in the 24-6 Sugar Bowl loss to Bama in the 2017 season, and one season later …

44-16.

Now Nick Saban can hammer home to his team to never take anything for granted. Now he can yell about trusting the process even more, and how it’s not the hunter instead of the hunted – whether that’s real or not.

It’s not a given for any team or program to win a Power Five conference title and do it with just one loss or fewer, but until further notice, just assume that Alabama had one really, really, really bad game against a really, really, really good and sharp Clemson team.