In football terms, the only area in which the Southeastern Conference can claim victory this season is in the expansion derby. Adding the Texas Longhorns saved the mighty SEC from College Football Playoff elimination at the quarterfinal stage. And let’s be clear: Texas wasn’t forged into a playoff program by its single season in the SEC; it already was one upon arrival.
It’s been a humbling run for a league that doesn’t do humble. It remains the best overall league in the nation, but Northern aggression is coming for the SEC.
Cold-weather powers—the Ohio State Buckeyes, Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Penn State Nittany Lions—join Texas in the Final Four. Last year’s title game matched the Michigan Wolverines and Washington Huskies. The SEC’s 8–6 bowl/playoff record this season isn’t bad, but it includes a 1–4 mark against its primary rival, the Big Ten. The league also failed to produce a headlining star, with zero SEC players in the Heisman Trophy voting top 10 for the first time since 2005.
So, what happened? A couple of things: Transfer rules and NIL have helped level the playing field, dispersing talent and diminishing depth from places that once stockpiled stars; proximity to talent is less of a dominant recruiting factor, especially at the transfer level; and the SEC’s championship-caliber programs simply aren’t performing at peak levels right now.
From 2006 to ’22, five SEC schools claimed 13 out of 17 national championships: the Alabama Crimson Tide won six; the LSU Tigers, Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs each won two; and the Auburn Tigers one. SEC schools also advanced to the title game four other times—Alabama twice, Georgia once and Auburn once.
But here in 2024–25, none of those five championship-level programs is hitting on all cylinders. Georgia isn’t far off, having won the SEC title, but it’s still off. The others are significantly off. Let’s examine each.
Alabama
Then: National titles in 2009, ’11, ’12, ’15, ’17 and ’20. Now: 9–4, its worst record since ’07. The Tide also lost three conference games for the first time since ’10, including their first loss to the perennial piñata Vanderbilt Commodores in 40 years. Their fan base pitched a fit about being left out of the initial 12-team playoff, then watched a 7–5 Michigan team with a raft of player opt-outs beat Bama in the ReliaQuest Bowl.
It’s abundantly clear what changed at Alabama this season—Nick Saban, best to ever do it, retired. Kalen DeBoer accepted the thankless job of being the man who follows The Man, leaving a comfortable setup at Washington. And while he might ultimately be successful—there is nothing in his background to suggest otherwise—the transition has been bumpy.
After the high of a 4–0 start and an upset of Georgia, things unraveled. Standout quarterback Jalen Milroe regressed as a passer over the last eight games; he threw just three touchdowns against FBS opponents and nine interceptions, with his completion rate dipping below 60% during that stretch. Milroe also lost five fumbles in those eight games, and Alabama had a minus-six turnover margin in its final three contests.
(One potential offensive fix materialized Monday, when longtime DeBoer offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb was fired from that job with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. Grubb was poised to join DeBoer in Tuscaloosa, Ala., last winter before the Seahawks kept him in Seattle.)
This also was not a Saban-level defensive production. Alabama finished 11th in the SEC in rushing defense, unheard of during Saban’s 2007–23 tenure. It was seventh in total defense after never finishing worse than fourth under Saban.
The competition for talent, which Alabama ruled for many years, is now fierce enough that Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne sent a letter to the fan base urging them to “fight back” with larger financial contributions aimed toward player recruitment. Alabama fans were not on the cutting edge of NIL embrace.
“Although we have been competitive from an NIL standpoint, our competition has us in their sights and are actively trying to surge ahead with NIL,” Byrne wrote. “You have heard examples of other teams using promises of million-dollar paydays to lure away our players or convince them not to come to Alabama. It is time for the Bama Nation to fight back.”
Prognosis: Alabama will remain a national player, capable of winning championships. But it won’t again experience the hegemony it experienced under Saban. That’s not a failure; that’s simply a regression toward the mean after an extreme outlier period of prosperity.
Georgia
Then: National titles in 2021 and ’22. Now: The Bulldogs lost three games—not exactly a collapse, but it was their most defeats in a season since ’18. This was also the first time since ’20 the Dawgs lost two games by double digits, and it marks the first time in CFP history the SEC champion hasn’t played in the national semifinals.
This was an uncharacteristic Kirby Smart team—one that at least invited speculation the program’s myriad of off-field issues might be affecting the on-field product. Georgia didn’t always seem super serious about its work: falling behind often and playing to the level of its competition; leading the nation in dropped passes; losing 20 turnovers for the first time in Smart’s nine seasons.
Georgia scored fewer than 20 points in regulation four times, its most since Smart’s first year in 2016. The Dawgs absolutely could not run the football with authority, ranking 102nd nationally and 15th in the SEC—their 124.4 yards per game was the lowest since 1963. That increased the pressure on Georgia QBs, who threw a school-record 513 passes; consequently their 25 sacks were more than the previous two seasons combined.
Despite all that, an injury to starter Carson Beck might be the only thing keeping Georgia from playing in the Final Four and perhaps getting a chance at a third national title in four years. Backup Gunner Stockton was not a problem—he looked like he belongs and could be a viable starter in 2025—but Beck had the ability to take over games and might have been the difference maker.
Prognosis: Smart has strongly resembled Saban The Younger, but during his Alabama tenure, Saban never had two straight years in which he wasn’t playing in the national semifinals and/or BCS championship game. That’s now where Georgia is—close to the top, but not on top and with some doubt about the program’s trajectory. There is still abundant talent in the fold, but receiver and offensive line are two positions where the Dawgs have to play better and might need more help. Will Smart make staff changes, particularly on the offensive side of the ball?
LSU
Then: National titles in 2007 and ’19. Now: The Tigers have averaged 4.6 losses per season since the 15–0 title juggernaut. This will be the fifth straight season finishing outside the AP top 10. Brian Kelly, hired to be the fourth LSU coach to win a title this century (after Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron), has not pushed the program past good and back to great.
LSU has extremely high expectations—perhaps unrealistically so, but those three natties between 2003–19 are a persistent reminder of what can be done. The program’s big swing to get Kelly has yielded improvement over where Orgeron left the program, but he hasn’t come close to replicating Coach O’s high point. For a program that aspires to reside in the sport’s gated community, an upper-middle-class existence is becoming tiresome.
The Tigers’ defense hasn’t been good enough under Kelly. They ranked 14th out of 16 SEC teams this season in both points allowed per game and yards allowed per play—and that was after hiring coordinator Blake Baker away from the Missouri Tigers and making him the highest-paid assistant in college football. Outscoring opponents was easier with Jayden Daniels at quarterback.
Prognosis: If Kelly can get off to a strong start for once (he’s 0–3 in season openers at LSU), the Tigers have a chance to be next season’s version of Penn State—a good team that takes the next step to make the playoff and makes some noise there. That would necessitate continued improvement from QB Garrett Nussmeier, but that seems probable. His second year as a starter could resemble Drew Allar’s at Penn State. And with LSU currently crushing the portal, with a transfer class that is ranked No. 1 by both 247 Sports and Rivals, the defense has a chance for immediate improvement. Kelly is certainly good enough to be a playoff coach in a 12-team format, but he needs to prove it before the fan base gives up on him.
Florida
Then: National titles in 2006 and ’08. Now: There have been occasional strong seasons, but the program malaise has persisted since Saban showed Urban Meyer who is boss in the ’09 SEC championship game. Florida has 10 seasons with eight or fewer wins since then and half that number with more than eight. Under four coaches since Meyer, the Gators have proven remarkably resistant to a sustained revival.
Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen all won at least a share of the SEC, but none made it through four full seasons before being fired. When the wheels came off, they went way off very quickly. Billy Napier appeared headed to the same fate earlier this season but remains in charge.
Napier is exactly .500 after three seasons, the worst record at the school in that span since 1979–81. But he will get a fourth year after Florida regrouped in the second half of the season against the toughest schedule in the country and, despite major injuries, finished 8–5. Dealing playoff death blows to LSU and the Mississippi Rebels along the way helped.
But the Gators had a deep hole to climb out of. There have been various shortcomings under Napier—special teams disasters, defensive lapses, quarterbacks who are great one week and lousy the next, in-game coaching blunders. It has taken a village to lower the program.
Prognosis: Florida has as much going for it heading into 2025 as almost anyone in the SEC. It appears to have a rising star QB in sophomore DJ Lagway, and classmate Jadan Baugh might be one at running back. A young defense got considerably better during the ’24 season and should return most of its key players. A stellar freshman class arrives, although it remains to be seen how many of them will contribute immediately. Unfortunately, the schedule is still tough.
Auburn
Then: National title in 2010, national runner-up in ’13. Now: Of the SEC’s championship five, Auburn has fallen the farthest. The five-year record is five games below .500 under three different coaches. The Tigers haven’t made the SEC championship game since ’17 and haven’t won it since ’13.
The fan zeal to compete in a league where other programs have more advantages is a double-edged sword—it has spurred Auburn to overachieve, but also led to a dysfunctional culture in which boosters have had too much control and precipitated some strange decisions. In other words, myopic desperation can be both an asset and a liability.
The current Tigers have been a raging disappointment through two seasons under Hugh Freeze, going 11–14. This seemed like a perfect marriage of checkered pasts, but it hasn’t worked out yet—aside from a late-season upset of the Texas A&M Aggies in November, Freeze hasn’t delivered. And that follows a two-season Bryan Harsin tenure that was undercut by booster sabotage.
In 14 of Freeze’s 25 games, Auburn has scored 21 or fewer points. Part of the problem: undercutting its offense with turnovers (it was last in the SEC in turnover margin this season). Quarterback Payton Thorne wasn’t the big portal acquisition the program had hoped for.
Prognosis: Like LSU, Auburn has gone hard in the portal and scored some big wins that could yield immediate improvement. (Quarterback Jackson Arnold, snagged from Oklahoma, could either be ready to launch or an expensive mistake—the jury is very much out.) The Tigers’ freshman class of 2025 is ranked in the top 10 nationally as well. Unlike Harsin, who was an SEC outsider hired against booster wishes, Freeze at least has the backing of the money people—for now. That’s always a fickle thing. With three road games in September, Freeze could either solidify or rapidly lose that support.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Examining Five SEC Recent Championship Contenders’ Slide.