“S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!”
The chants rang out from the Georgia section on New Year’s Eve 2021 after the Bulldogs’ dominant win over Michigan in the Orange Bowl. Earlier in the day, Alabama cruised past Cincinnati, which meant an SEC Championship rematch was in store for the College Football Playoff Championship.
An all-SEC final seems to be the norm these days.
In baseball on Wednesday, Texas A&M defeated fellow SEC member Florida to advance to the national championship. The Aggies will meet SEC member Tennessee for the title.
This comes weeks after Oklahoma and Texas squared off in the softball national championship. While those two are still in the Big 12, both are packing their bags for the SEC, which they will join officially on July 1.
Meanwhile, in men’s track and field over the past three years, Florida has won the title while two other SEC schools (Auburn, Arkansas) have finished runner-up. The year the conference didn’t finish runner-up, Texas did.
On the women’s side, it’s the same story with the SEC owning two of the past three titles and the other belonging to Texas.
Go on down the line of sports, and the SEC dominates. It begs the question: Does the NCAA have an SEC problem? It depends on who you ask.
Football is king, and the SEC routinely garners the top recruits and plays in the biggest games.
The league has made 10 appearances in the national championship game during the College Football Playoff era. The rest of the NCAA has made 10 appearances combined.
From a recruiting perspective, the best football players choose SEC schools. In the 2024 ESPN 300 recruiting rankings, the league grabbed eight of the top 10 players and 19 of the top 30. It’s not just a few powerhouse programs either — those 19 players are represented by 11 schools from the SEC.
From a viewership perspective, SEC dominance isn’t pushing viewers away. If Texas and Oklahoma are included, 13 of the top 25 most-watched college football games in 2023 included at least one SEC school.
The 2023 Men’s College World Series final between LSU and Florida drew a record audience, averaging 2.86 million viewers across the three-game series, up 75 percent from last year’s two-game finals. Two of the top three highest-rated women’s college basketball games included an SEC school. Again, the list goes on and on.
But while viewers continue to tune in now, will there be long-term implications to the SEC’s dominance? Baseball is already a highly regionalized sport, and softball and gymnastics are much of the same. Football is SEC-heavy and even men’s basketball, which used to be a bit of a sore spot for the league, has flourished recently.
More exposure means better facilities, higher NIL payouts and increased fandom. This can lead to more players, no matter their home state, leaving for the greener pastures of the South. Does this lead to fans outside of the region losing interest? If the SEC continues to win do they break away from the rest of the NCAA, content to rake in their own television money and not be hampered by sharing with anyone else?
These are the potential problems that threaten the NCAA as we know it. The West has already fallen as the Pac-12 crumbled, and the East Coast is shaky with the ACC teetering on the edge of self-destructing. As more fall, the SEC needs the rest of the NCAA less and less.
In a shifting marketplace for college athletics, it’s increasingly a world of the haves and have-nots. The SEC is the king of the “haves” and will only continue to grow.
Get ready for more of those “S-E-C!” chants.
