By Darren Epps
Staff Writer
Picking an SEC champion in the 1990s was like the Pepsi iTunes promo from a few years back — one in three wins.
Florida was a safe pick. The SEC championship game, with a nod to the popular lounge in Pensacola, Fla., should have been called the Flora-Bama Bowl. The Gators claimed the first five SEC East titles and beat Alabama three times for the conference championship. Tennessee won it twice, then Alabama, then Florida again in 2000. It was one of three.
Following the 2007 season, just seven years after the Gators won their fifth SEC championship in nine seasons, conference coaches are looking back on those days like they were part of the era of leather helmets and pig-hide footballs. The time when two or three teams could regularly dominate the SEC are over, never to return.
The term “parity” is the buzz word, the en vogue description of a new era in the SEC. But it seems inaccurate, careless. Parity in sports can suggest that the teams are equal, meeting in the middle.
Based on recruiting numbers and the accomplished coaches in the league, the SEC is not evening out but evolving into an even more powerful conference. One more difficult to traverse than the 2007 season, which produced a two-loss LSU team that cruised in the national title game.
“It was really tough getting through the year, to be honest,” LSU senior running back Jacob Hester said. “This was the toughest year I’ve ever seen. People were banged up all the time. Each week, there were new bumps and bruises. The competition level was so high. It was just really, really tough.”
Hester may miss the real challenge. According to Rivals.com, the top 10 recruiting classes in the country included seven SEC teams in 2007. More of those players will get on the field next season.
And this year, Alabama, Georgia and Florida rank 2-3-4 nationally. So where would you even start to pick a champion in 2009?
“People are doing a better job of recruiting,” Georgia offensive coordinator and former quarterback Mike Bobo said. “It’s so high-profile now with the Internet and Rivals.com and Scout.com. Everybody knows about every prospect out there. There is not a hidden gem in South Georgia anymore. They know about them, and they will come try to recruit them. People are recruiting more nationally now, and it’s harder to keep guys in state. It’s just tougher.”
Recruiting is difficult, but not like trying to out-coach a rival in this league. The SEC now features, thanks to LSU, five coaches with national championship rings. A sixth, Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville, finished the 2004 season undefeated but was denied a chance to win the title.
Bobby Petrino, regarded as one of the top offensive minds in the country, left the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons to coach Arkansas. Houston Nutt, who won the 2006 SEC West title, moved to Ole Miss. The SEC Coach of the Year, Sylvester Croom, is at Mississippi State.
“I think you can have teams still dominate depending on how well organized they are and how well coached they are and how well they recruit,” Tuberville said. “But there’s more coaches coming in who know what they’re doing. It’s a big change.”
Not all of those coaches can win. As ESPN’s Beano Cook told the Press-Register in Mobile, “If the coaches were generals in the Pentagon, the thing in Iraq would be over. These coaches are unbelievable.
“You know what this is like? It’s like having six generals competing against each other to see who rules the world. That’s what the Western Division of the SEC is like. You have MacArthur, Napoleon, Caesar, Lee ... six armies in that one division competing against each other to see who is going to rule the world.”
Which is thrilling for followers of war or the SEC. But to engage in these battles every week is becoming more stressful.
Back in the 1990s, Tennessee and Florida would decide the SEC East in September. The drama, typically, dissipated following that game.
Last season, however, Tennessee lost to Florida by 39 points and won the division championship.
Florida finished third.
“I’m going to be honest with you, I think it’s a lot of pressure,” said Georgia recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach Rodney Garner, who began coaching in the SEC in 1990. “I wish it wasn’t that much.
“Every program is attracting top-tier coaches, and every one of those coaches is putting together top-tier staffs, so from top to bottom, there is a sense of excellence. Because of escalating salaries, everybody is feeling the pressure of getting it done now, because there is not much patience. You better be successful real quick or it’s going to be a quick turnover.”
And that’s the irony. As coaches help build competitive programs, their tenure at the school decreases. Endure some struggles for a few years — or one year, in the case of Nutt — and fans will demand a change.
Conversely, coaches who consistently win will often leave for a better job.
“To have somebody dominate the league like Coach (Bear) Bryant did or Bowden Wyatt did in those years, and Bobby Dodd, I don’t think we’ll see that anymore because nobody will stay at one place for very long,” said former Alabama coach Gene Stallings, who retired after the 1996 season. “The thing that bothers me personally is nobody honors contacts. The university doesn’t offer contracts, they offer money. The coaches don’t honor contracts. They go somewhere else.”
Lately, the SEC.
E-mail Darren Epps at depps@timesfreepress.com
