Arkansas' beatdown of Texas was a throttling, and the SEC was 3-0 in bowl games and making the College Football Playoff selection committee look good.
The Big 12, which got snubbed by the selection committee, was 0-2 against the SEC.
It looked like another season of greatness was about to be crowned. Long live the King. Long live the SEC, SEC, SEC.
Only reality was lurking in the shadows of a new year, a new dawning.
The next day, LSU was lackluster and lost to a dull Notre Dame team. But bells were ringing when Georgia raced by Bobby Petrino and the Louisville Cardinals, making the SEC undefeated against the ACC and Big 12.
And the big guns hadn't been fired. The SEC West was surely just getting started, and LSU's loss was because the Tigers simply didn't play hard enough.
Wrong.
TCU destroyed Ole Miss, 42-3, and it seemed like it could have been worse. Perhaps the biggest mistake the Rebels made was beating Alabama.
The Horned Frogs, who fell from No. 3 to No. 5 in the final playoff poll, were out to prove they belonged in the Final Four. And they did, not in place of Ohio State but the Crimson Tide. More on that in a moment.
Mississippi State, which will always be known as the playoff committee's first No. 1 team, struggled to stop Georgia Tech and went down 49-34.
Suddenly, the SEC was 4-3 in bowl games and most of the nation was taking notice with glee and joy.
Then Auburn fell to Wisconsin, which had an interim head coach, and it would take Missouri downing Minnesota to keep a nation believing SEC football could still be superior and that Alabama would step on Ohio State, which was down to a third-string quarterback.
The Tide lucked into a 21-6 lead and looked like they might have enough four-leaf clovers to hold on and beat a superior team. The announcers mentioned how polished Bama is when Nick Saban has four weeks to prepare for an opponent.
But the Buckeyes outscored the Tide 36-14 to finish the game, and those same announcers started talking about what a brilliant coach Urban Meyer has been since he became a head coach 141 victories ago, with only 26 losses.
As Alabama goes, so goes the SEC, and the crown is off after seven consecutive national championships and a runner-up finish last year even though Florida (twice), Auburn and LSU contributed to those national titles.
Alabama didn't just lose, it never looked as good as Ohio State, which put up 537 yards on the usually stingy Crimson Tide.
For the second season in a row, the national champion will not be from the SEC.
The SEC finished the bowl season 7-5 after Florida held on to beat East Carolina on Saturday, but the losses carried more weight than the victories because they were from the power side of the SEC, the Western Division.
The division that went 11-4 against its brothers in the regular season went 2-5 in bowls, while the side that was supposed to be weaker went 5-0. It was all about the level of competition, but you could hear the joy in the voices of the talking heads broadcasting lower-tiered games after Alabama's loss.
Some even claim they saw this coming.
Like most who write about the SEC, it should be noted that it will not be written here that it is the best football conference in America until it re-establishes itself as the best.
There are two bowl games left: Arkansas State vs. Toledo tonight and then Ohio State and Oregon will meet on Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas, to determine who is the national champion and which conference is the king of college football.
Sports on 01/04/2015