The Southeastern Conference awards its football champion an impressive trophy that includes a running back trying to leap over a blocker and a tackler. It’s a pretty cool ode to the kind of goal-line play a Herschel Walker or Bo Jackson once made.

They might want to shelve it this year, especially if Nick Saban’s top-ranked, unbeaten Alabama defeats Florida to capture its fifth league title in six seasons. (The Tide is currently a 22-point favorite, the biggest for the SEC game in over two decades.)

Instead, they could hand out a diorama of the South, with 13 college towns laying in smoldering ruins as Saban sits on a throne in Tuscaloosa eating Little Debbie snack cakes. Maybe the rest of the league could be waving white flags.

The once mighty SEC is dead. (Well, at least for this year.)

The league consists of Alabama and a whole lot of mediocre-at-best.

What was once the nation’s deepest, most competitive conference in football is a shell of itself, a parade of the down and the defeated, so far behind the Crimson Tide that this weekend’s SEC championship game is essentially an exhibition contest. Alabama can lose and still make the playoff. Florida can win and it won’t matter. We’re a long way from when the game was a de facto national semifinal, or even the championship game (2009 No. 2 Bama beat No. 1 UF).

The No. 1 suspect for the annihilation is Saban. The 65-year-old hasn’t just dominated the competition but destroyed it. It’s not just in relation to Alabama either. Yes, the Tide has run away form the pack, winning its eight league games by an average of 23.3 points. It can happen. The stunning development is that the pack has fallen apart. No one else is any good.

View photos Nick Saban is 65-12 in SEC play in 10 seasons at Alabama. (Getty Images) More

Put it this way, if Alabama beats Florida Saturday then every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban will have at least four losses.

Already we have this: every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban combined to go just 5-9 against other Power 5 conference opponents (and BYU). That included last weekend’s trips behind the woodshed by Florida (31-13 loss to Florida State) and South Carolina (56-7 loss to Clemson).

The Power 5 and BYU might be a bit too easy of a cut-off though. Every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban combined to go a sorry 0-6 against the current AP top 15, a complete washout. There are but two victories against the current top 25 (Kentucky over Louisville; Tennessee over Virginia Tech).

Every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban will hit the recruiting trail in desperate need of talent, a rebuilding project (at best) in progress. Every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban will have a solid portion of its own fan base skeptical of its coach’s ability and long-term stability. Tennessee is so upset that some people want Lane Kiffin back.

Basically, every team in the league not coached by Nick Saban will be wondering when Nick Saban will just go off and retire … or return to the NFL.

About the only thing comparable is the heyday of Bear Bryant, when he lorded over Southern football. In 1979, as Bryant’s Tide went 12-0, capping a three season, 34-2, two national title run. The SEC runner-up, Georgia, finished 6-5. (Auburn, at 8-3, was the only other ranked team).

This is even more impressive now because there are 13 competitors, not nine, there are strict scholarship limits (unlike during Bryant’s day) and pretty much every single school is flush with money and commitment to win. This isn’t a region or a conference just waking up. This is the league that once owned the sport coming unglued.

Since this is a recent trend and small sample size there can be no definitive reasons why the SEC has fallen apart, or even that it will last. You can start with Saban though and the way he doesn’t just beat the other teams on the field, but in their long-term decision making.

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