The SEC is currently the king of college football. Or maybe it should read that the SEC West is the king of college football right now. The West boasts a 41-16 record over the East in the past three years.
How did it get that way?
It hasn’t been that long since the East had its way with the West. Beginning in 1992, the year the conference began playing a conference championship game, the East won seven of the first nine conference championships.
More recently, the two sides have been almost dead even. From 2000 to 2008, the East claimed five conference titles, while the West got four. Each division also claimed two national championships during that time period.
Since 2009, the West -- mainly Alabama and LSU with some help from Auburn and Arkansas -- has seen an unprecedented level of success. It’s been a monopoly on not only the SEC title, but the national championship as well.
Here are three reasons why the power has flipped to the West recently:
1. Nick Saban
He’s the unquestioned architect of Alabama’s current squad, but he’s also a huge part of rebuilding LSU. The Tigers hadn’t won a conference title since 1988 when Saban took over in Baton Rouge. They won two in Saban’s five-year stint at LSU from 2000 to 2004. Credit must go to Les Miles for his extension of Saban’s work at LSU, but Saban left him very well stocked -- the Tigers had the No. 1 and No. 2 recruiting classes according to Rivals.com in 2003 and 2004.
2. Florida and Tennessee are down
The Gators and Vols were West slayers in the 1990s. Those two alone accounted for a six-year run of conference championships from 1992 to 1998. The Gators also kept the East afloat during the Chris Leak/Tim Tebow era from 2006 to 2008, winning two of three conference titles. Undefeated Alabama knocking off previously-unbeaten Florida in the 2009 conference title game was the unofficial changing of the guard. Overall, the Vols and Gators have combined for a 46-32 record during the West’s recent three-year reign.
3. DL and RB
Offenses have opened up around the nation, but teams in the West prove that running and stopping the run can still win championships. The West has held the decided advantage at these two crucial positions over the past few years. In the last two NFL drafts, six West DL have been selected in the first three rounds, as opposed to just one from the East. The East may have the current best RB in South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore, but the West has been deeper overall with NFL-level talent such as Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, Knile Davis, Michael Dyer and Stevan Ridley in the backfield.
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