There has been quite a bit of talk this football season that the SEC, the giant of all giant football leagues, is down a bit.
It is, but it didn't start this season. It may have begun two seasons ago, then picked up some steam last season that has carried into this season.
One of the things that keeps most of the scrutiny away from what happened in the 2015 season is Alabama won the national championship.
Like the dripping from a sinus cavity in a hay field, Alabama is the one constant in the SEC. The Crimson Tide are consistently good and have made every College Football Playoff.
That year in the bowl season, the SEC went an amazing 8-2. But two years ago at this time, the conference had six teams ranked in The Associated Press Top 25, only to finish with five as Texas A&M (No. 9) and Georgia (No. 19) fell out and Tennessee clawed its way in at No. 22 on the strength of beating No. 13 Northwestern 45-6 in the Outback Bowl.
Fast forward to this day a year ago, and the SEC again had six teams in the poll.
Alabama was No. 1, A&M No. 8, Tennessee No. 9, Ole Miss No. 14, Arkansas No. 16 and Florida No. 18.
By the time the final poll was released, the Aggies had disappeared again. Ole Miss and Arkansas also hit cold fronts and slid out of sight.
The final poll had Alabama No. 2 and the next SEC team was LSU -- probably the most talked about team in the country right now in a negative way -- at No. 13, followed by Florida No. 14, Tennessee No. 22 and Auburn No. 24.
This was after the highly-touted SEC had gone 6-6 in bowl games while the ACC, including national champion Clemson, was 8-3.
Today, the SEC has four teams ranked, with the Crimson Tide at No. 1. Georgia, which seems to be getting better each week, is No. 5. Auburn is at No. 12, and the final team is the charmed Florida Gators at No. 21.
The ACC has five teams ranked, including Clemson, who knocked the big A off the podium in the championship game last season.
Of the Big 5 schools, two conferences -- the Pac-12 and Big Ten -- have three undefeated teams; the other three have two.
So no, the SEC is probably not the dominant league in all of America this season, and it probably wasn't last season either. While the ACC is shining in the SEC's decline, watch out for the Big Ten.
Yes, Ohio State got beat soundly by Oklahoma, but Urban Meyer won two national championships as the head coach at Florida, and he's recruiting the sun out of the Sunshine State. Oh, and he already has one at Ohio State.
Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh is a wild card in a game of Texas Hold'em. The man is cutting-edge crazy when it comes to recruiting, and his top focus is finding players in Florida.
Florida is second only to Texas in turning out blue-chip players, and by blue chip that's generally players who are going to contribute as a freshman and start as a sophomore.
California is third, Georgia fourth and unfortunately for much of college football, Ohio is fifth, but it produces half as many blue-chippers as Georgia.
Curious about Arkansas? Averaging the past five years, it ranks 23rd with an average of about three blue-chippers per year.
That's behind South Carolina with five, Mississippi with seven, Tennessee with almost nine (it's a really wide state though), Alabama with almost 12 and Louisiana with almost 15.
Of the top 25 states for recruiting, eight are in the SEC footprint and five of them, counting Oklahoma, border the state of Arkansas.
The SEC has slipped, and there's not a good excuse for it.
Sports on 10/04/2017