Ahead of the Indiana Hoosiers and Miami Hurricanes' clash in the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday, January 19, the SEC's absence from a third-straight title game has many thinking the conference's demise is here.
USA Today's Matt Hayes is one of those people. Hayes called out the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs, LSU Tigers, Florida Gators, and Texas A&M Aggies by name for failing their sky-high expectations in the NIL/rev-share era.
As Hayes pointed out, Texas Tech Red Raiders superbooster and Fort Worth oilman Cody Campbell has built a program with rev-share payouts that used to resemble the schools that "didn't pay" their players before student athletes started cashing sanctioned paychecks.
"There are millionaires and billionaires who love their universities and are obsessive about winning. Throw open the doors to NIL and free player movement — and legalized big booster involvement — and watch how quickly the SEC looks like the ACC," Hayes wrote.
"Watch how quickly Alabama comes back to the pack, and Georgia can’t get out of the quarterfinals in the CFP. How quickly LSU and Florida and Texas A&M spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fire coaches and start over.
"More to the point, watch how quickly the deep-pocket Cody Campbells of the world begin to simply play by the rules laid out by the SEC and Big Ten ― and build teams that look and play like SEC teams of the past."
What Campbell is doing in the open, with public information on all salaries available at a state school per an information request, is more honorable than the bagmen of years past, who gave the "It Just Means More" tagline a devilish undertone. Obligatory mention of the cars Crimson Tide players were driving during their dominant 2010s era.
It's just sad to see this change, since societies in the south were built on winning football.
Auburn's fall in the rev-share/NIL era is understated, but it's still a thing
Going from a College Football world that once saw Alabama win every other year, Georgia doing the same at the very end, and schools like LSU and Florida formerly dominated before, or right when Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, is more dramatic than going to a world where the Auburn Tigers went from an 8-10-win team to a perennial loser.
That doesn't mean Auburn's fall hasn't happened. It has, and it's been stark. It's the same world, and it's the one we're living in.
As the Plains sees new, modern structures being erected everywhere, there is a lack of the same character from when the team was winning games, and the Auburn Creed meant something. From the sounds of it, the Creed's principles were absent under the last two full-time head football coaches' regimes.
Just like the perennial contenders in the conference, the Tigers need to figure out how to restore glory and make "It Just Means More" hit like it used to. Easier said than done, but all sports are cyclical, and the current CFB landscape will always favor the SEC and Big Ten.
So it should happen sometime in the future. Especially with a different personality like Alex Golesh in tow.
Only time will tell, though.