SEC Final Thoughts: Does it Still Just Mean More?

The 2025 season has come to a close. It is time for conference championships and the CFB Playoff to begin. Despite Ohio State and Indiana sitting atop the AP and CFB Playoff standings, as many as five SEC teams could be in the field. That’s a whole helluva a lot better than the three teams that got in and the three teams (Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina) that got left out in the cold. But let’s be honest. Something doesn’t feel right. As we try to gather our SEC final thoughts, we can’t help but wonder: Does it still just mean more?

Ole Miss is 11-1. Winners of three straight Egg Bowls. The Rebels were a Jordan-Hare scare away from a rematch in Atlanta with Georgia in the SEC Championship. City Grocery and The Grove are ready to bring CFB Playoff tailgating to another level. Yet, none of these are the storylines as we wrap up the 2025 season. Instead, Mary Smith and the rest of the CFB community were on “Lane Watch.”

Lane Kiffin is headed to LSU. He is leaving Oxford, a place where he has been able to resurrect his image and the Rebels into one of the best storylines in the SEC and CFB. Lane is 55-19 at Ole Miss in his six seasons. Win or lose, we Grove. That was long the saying at Ole Miss before Kiffin came. Sure, Brother Hugh got them some small success in the 2010s, but for the most part, they have been more known for the tailgate than anything on the field.

Lane has the Rebs primed for a playoff game and has shown an ability to play with just about anybody in the country. They took care of Oklahoma in Norman and went toe-to-toe with the Dawgs in Athens. Yet, rather than finish what he has started. He is leaving. For LSU?

LSU and Florida were the prime suitors for Kiffin’s services. If this were 2015, this would be a no-brainer, but 2025 is different. Ole Miss and Kiffin have shown how to build a modern roster leveraging NIL and the Transfer Portal. Neither LSU nor Florida is as coordinated as what is happening at Ole Miss. Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, and Mizzou have shown you don’t need to be a “name” to compete in 2025.

Kiffin is at his best when he has a chip and an edge. He loses that at LSU, along with the credibility and goodwill he has built.  He will claim he wants to win championships, but we just have to ask: Why are you leaving?

Arkansas, Florida, LSU, and Auburn all made coaching changes (so far) in 2025. All of these programs faced a similar issue. They had coaches who worked well in the pre-Portal/NIL era, but floundered in the current landscape. These teams joined Penn State in firing their head coach early to get a “jump on the candidates.” The biggest question, though, is who is the upgrade? Who will be “the guy” to take your program to the next level?

The answers are far from obvious. Kiffin is the hottest name, but he has not won an SEC Championship, been to a Playoff, and has a losing record against Top 10 teams. Jon Sumrall is this year’s hot commodity. He has SEC experience and has won at Troy and Tulane. Intriguing, but so was Billy Napier a few years ago. Where are the coordinators and top-level assistants ready to make the jump?

Coaches are hired to get fired. As Kirby Smart commented after Brian Kelly was fired at LSU, “That office you’re in, that’s not your office. You’re borrowing it.” Of the four current SEC schools that will make a hire, how many work? Maybe one? The rest will be back on the same ride in two or three years.

Georgia and Alabama will play in the SEC Championship on Saturday. This will be the fifth time that the Dawgs and the Tide will meet. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Texas A&M had the inside track on the SEC Championship but saw its dreams of a first appearance go up in smoke Friday night in Austin. The Aggies were 7-1 in SEC play. That is something that the SEC should stand on and be proud of. The problem is that those seven wins came against the bottom half of the SEC. This is a team that was down 30-3 at halftime to South Carolina and came back to win 31-30. How good is Texas A&M? We’re just not sure. They have looked good, but you have to question who they have played.

It comes down to unbalanced schedules. Eight conference games in a 16-team league just doesn’t work. It is hard enough to compare teams from different conferences; it is even more difficult when the schedules look so different within the same conference. The SEC moves to a nine-game schedule next year, but there will still be a lack of balance. We are not a proponent of divisions here; those can lack balance as well, see the SEC (L)East for so many years. Instead, we would advocate for the conference to be broken up into four pods. We broke it down last Summer, but the gist was to make the pods based on the finishing order from the previous year and try to settle it on the field. It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than what we have now.

Which team is more deserving of a College Football Playoff spot? 10-2 Vanderbilt or 9-3 Ohio State. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the reasons why the Longhorns need to get into the playoffs. The narrative from Sark and MOC is that Texas had the best schedule. Sure, they lost to Ohio State in Week 1, but at least they didn’t play Charleston Southern, Virginia Tech, or Georgia State like Vandy did to start the season. We are not picking on Vandy, but just using their non-conference schedule for comparison.

Let’s face it, neither one is going to get in. The field is too crowded. In 2024, the narrative was Don’t lose three games, and you are likely in. Now in 2025, we will have at least a small handful of two-loss teams that won’t find their way in. Here is the real challenge: 2025 will be a data and scheduling point for the SEC and P4 teams. If Texas doesn’t get it, why should they bother to play Michigan, Ohio State, or Alabama (when they were in the Big 12) out of conference?

Just hammer your cupcakes and try to take care of business in college football. Sure, the easy answer is, don’t lose to Florida, but that is a fact that doesn’t help the argument. When Texas is left out, look for more teams to follow Florida and Alabama’s lead in getting rid of big-time non-conference games. That is a loss for fans and all of college football.

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