Stephen A Smith on First Take Credit: ESPN
By Sean Keeley on

When the Indiana Hoosiers take on the Miami Hurricanes in the 2025 national championship on January 19, it will mark the third-straight season that the mighty SEC doesn’t have a team playing for the national title.

The conference has caught a lot of flak over its inability to finish the job despite having the most teams in the CFP each season, but ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith thinks the trend underlines a deeper issue for the mighty league.

After the SEC’s Ole Miss lost to the ACC’s Miami in the CFP semifinals, Smith offered a pointed criticism of the conference, saying that the modern era of NIL and the transfer portal has undercut the SEC’s dominance and could spell ongoing issues in the years ahead.

“They ain’t feeling you anymore,” Smith said. “When you look at the absence of depth, why? Because players are choosing to go elsewhere. It ain’t just the second-stringers anymore. You got some all-world players saying, ‘We don’t have to be in the SEC anymore the way that we used to.’

“We’ll go to the Big Ten, we’ll go to the Big 12, we’ll go to the ACC,” Smith stated. “You see some of these cats in Miami, how are they looking? Think about that for a second here.”

Smith also noted that the caliber of the coaches roaming SEC sidelines might have taken a hit in recent years, specifically citing Alabama’s change from Nick Saban to Kalen DeBoer.

“He’s a good coach,” Smith said of DeBoer. “He just ain’t in the same class as Nick Saban. So, there’s a precipitous drop off there.

“This ain’t the days of Urban Meyer. They don’t have Tim Tebow in Florida. They don’t look the same.”

A common criticism of the Big Ten is that it’s top-heavy, with teams like Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan, and Indiana overshadowing the lesser programs below. However, Smith offered that critique to the SEC now.

“There’s some mediocrity within the SEC Conference,” Smith added. “The allure is gone. They’re a powerful conference, but the allure that they once had has been eviscerated. Period.”

Like many things he says, Smith is oversimplifying things here. The SEC has remained dominant in every recent season, including the last three. It’s true that none of their schools have made it to the title game, but they remain the conference that sets the tone and consistently gets the most teams in the CFP. They have perhaps dropped off from the days of Saban and Kirby Smart’s Georgia dominance, but not by as much as Smith implies.

Not to mention, the CFP will likely bend to the SEC’s will and expand to ensure more of its teams make it. So don’t cry for the conference just yet.

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.

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