ATHENS — College football “dynasties are over” in the SEC, and perhaps all of college football.
This, according to Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who shared his thoughts on the depth of the SEC and the effect of the transfer portal on the coaches’ teleconference and with ESPN on Wednesday.
“These loaded SEC (teams), like the Bama run, the Georgia run, I don’t think that’s happening again under the current system,” Kiffin said on the teleconference. “I think that you can’t keep that many great players on a roster because they’re not playing and they transfer. And not only do they transfer, some of them go in the conference, so it balances out the conference more.”
Indeed, Damon Wilson ll would have been Georgia’s leading returner in the sacks department (three) had he not transferred to Missouri this past offseason.
Instead, Wilson leads the Tigers and ranks second in the SEC with 3.5 sacks this season while the entire UGA team has five sacks between three players.
“In my opinion, the dynasties are over,” Kiffin told ESPN on Wednesday. “Alabama with Coach (Nick) Saban and then Kirby (Smart) at Georgia, where they had those rosters year in, year out and there would be a bunch of wins by 30 points in the conference, those days are done.”
Georgia set an NFL record with 15 players selected in the 2022 draft on the heels of its 2021 CFP championship season.
Former Georgia All-American and Super Bowl winner Jon Stinchcomb said the talent disparity is not the same while appearing on DawgNation Daily earlier this week.
“There is very little chance that you get to a national championship game and that (SEC) team is undefeated,” Stinchcomb said Monday. “It is much more like the NFL model, where it’s been ‘Any Given Sunday’ at that level, it’s going to be ‘Any Given Saturday,’ because there is more parity.
“Georgia’s first couple of national championships (2021, 2022), you look at the difference in where Georgia was and where the opponent was, and it’s such a huge gap that there was an expectation that not only was Georgia going to win, they were going to blow them out,” he said. “I don’t think that’s where we are in college football now.”
Kiffin said the newer transfer portal rules, which allow players to move from one school to another without sitting out a season, enable teams to rebuild quickly.
“If you’re a bottom conference team one year, you can fix your problems, right away, through the portal,” Kiffin said on the teleconference. “Where before, you had high school kids, it’d take a couple of years, so a team might be down for two or three years.
“The SEC is different than any other conference with their middle and bottom teams. No other conference is like it.”
Kiffin pointed to South Carolina’s next five games — at LSU, against Oklahoma, against Alabama, at Ole Miss and at Texas A&M.
“(Play) the best five (teams) outside of the SEC, and I don’t know that would be as hard as South Carolina’s next five games,” Kiffin said on the teleconference. “And we’re going to play an extra SEC game next year. So yes, it is totally different than it’s ever been.”
Georgia coach Kirby Smart noted the SEC’s competitive balance after the Bulldogs’ 24-21 loss to Alabama on Saturday.
“I’m telling you guys, this is the new era of what we’re going to see...” said Smart, whose Bulldogs have trailed in their past eight games against Power 4 teams. “(Alabama) has got to go play a good team next week, we’ve got to go play a good team next week.”
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