Title/Alt Text A rising tide lifts all ships. That might be the perfect way to describe what’s happened in the SEC. As the Alabama Crimson Tide has risen, so too has the conference, becoming the most dominant in college football in winning eight of the last 10 national championships.

As sick as the league might be of facing him every Saturday, it can begrudgingly thank Nick Saban for that streak of dominance. Back in 2007, when Saban arrived at Alabama, there was still some debate as to which conference was king in college football. The 1990s and early 2000s — when Florida State, Miami, Nebraska, Michigan and Oklahoma ruled the turf — didn’t seem all that far away. From 1990 to 2005, the SEC won four national titles. Florida was days away from a blowout win over Ohio State when the Crimson Tide hired Saban. It was very debatable whether the SEC was the No. 1 conference.

Now it isn’t.

From the moment Saban arrived, it was either keep pace or get lapped in the SEC. For the most part, and especially in the SEC West, the rest of the conference has kept up. The gap has widened between the SEC and the rest of the world.

But a Big Ten renaissance is coming. In fact, it's already underway. Like Saban did in the SEC, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer is well into the process of establishing a new, more competitive, pace.

In 2012, the year of Meyer’s first recruiting class with the Buckeyes, the Big Ten had two programs ranked in the top 25 of the 247Sports Recruiting Rankings — Ohio State (5) and Michigan (6). The following year that number was three. In 2014 it was four. Last month, it was five.

To Meyer, that rise matters a lot.

"Rankings are important," he said of recruiting rankings on National Signing Day earlier this month. "As long as you're keeping score, we'd like to do the best we can."

When Meyer arrived in the winter of 2011 to close out the 2012 recruiting class, he brought his SEC recruiting playbook with him from Florida. That included aggressive tactics that the Big Ten hadn't seen before. It shook up the conference.

"I can tell you this," said then-Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema in 2012 referencing Meyer's tactics. "We at the Big Ten don't want to be like the SEC in any way, shape or form."

Ironically, Bielema is now the head coach at Arkansas.

Anyway, the truth was the Big Ten did want to be like the SEC. Two years later, James Franklin was hired away from Vanderbilt to Penn State. That brought to the conference another aggressive recruiting mentality forged in the fires of the SEC. Immediately, Franklin began to ruffle the feathers of regional rivals, particularly Maryland's Randy Edsall.

"We're not gonna boast and brag," Edsall said in 2014 in response to Franklin calling Maryland an in-state territory for Penn State. "We're gonna find guys that fit the profile we're looking for. We're gonna worry about ourselves and not worry about anything else. Talk is cheap."

Eighteen months later, Edsall was fired at Maryland, the latest in the crumbling of the Big Ten’s gentlemen’s club.

The wrecking ball came when Jim Harbaugh was hired by Michigan last year.

The former Wolverines QB, fresh off an up-and-down time as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has come at recruiting with a fresh approach and has debuted everything from slumber parties with recruits to QB camps featuring NFL arms. In 2016 it netted him the nation's No. 5 recruiting class that included the nation's No. 1 prospect per the 247Sports Composite in defensive tackle Rashan Gary.

With Meyer and Harbaugh now leading the way, the Big Ten looks poised to have at least two regular contenders for top 5 recruiting classes. The rest of the conference has bought into the model.

This offseason, the Big Ten had four job openings. Two (Minnesota and Illinois) were filled by in-house hires. The other two (Rutgers and Maryland) were filled by Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh disciples. Chris Ash was hired at Rutgers after spending the last two seasons with Meyer at Ohio State. D.J. Durkin was hired at Maryland after learning under Meyer (at Bowling Green and briefly at Florida) and Harbaugh (at Stanford and Michigan).

Without question, there’s a new status quo in the Big Ten. If there’s a problem, it’s a lack of native talent. There's just more of it in SEC country than there is in Big Ten country. But that’s an easy fix for Ohio State and Michigan.

Both Ohio State and Michigan are taking a national approach with a lot of success. The Buckeyes are a major presence in Florida and Georgia. Michigan is mining Florida, Alabama, California and New Jersey with success among others. In turn, that’s opened up the Midwest for Michigan State to thrive.

The Spartans have responded with three consecutive top 25 classes in the past three years, which followed a dry spell that didn't see Michigan State crack that club in eight of the previous nine recruiting classes. Michigan State's 2016 class saw it draw exclusively from Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and New Jersey.

Back when Jim Tressel was at Ohio State and Lloyd Carr at Michigan, there weren’t enough Midwest prospects to go around for everyone to get fed.

It's not just recruiting, though. With the way schools like Iowa, Wisconsin and Northwestern have proven that they can identify and develop talent, recruiting isn't the only way to succeed in the conference.

Look at the College Football Top247, our year-end ranking of college players. Twenty-four players the top 100 play in the Big Ten, two more than the SEC has. This year’s NFL draft should follow a similar trend for the Big Ten. According to CBSSports.com’s list of the 50 best prospects, 12 hail from the Big Ten. That’s Buckeye-heavy, yes, but Penn State and Michigan State joined them in producing top-flight draft talent this season, too.

The winners of the first two College Football Playoff titles, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, are both recruiting at recruiting levels largely-unmatched. Unlike Saban, Meyer has gone largely unopposed in the Big Ten during his tenure. But it’s clear that's starting to change. He's got company now and that's good for the Big Ten. Better yet, it's good for college football.