State of the SEC

[tsweezy]

Hello everybody, and welcome to your annual state of the SEC speech. As commissioner, I have self-appointed myself the man in charge of ushering this conference into an era of supremacy in college football, and think we have the best programs and coaches in the entire country. With that said, I'd like to take this brief time to go over some of the highlights (and acknowledge the lowlights) of the past year as we look to turn the page into the new season here in a few days.

 

2021 Retrospective

 

2021 was the inaugural year for SimCFB, and as such we strove to put our mark on it. We started the year with 7 coaches, fully half our league filled and I believe was at least tied for the most coached teams of any conference. Starting the year off, we were expected to do quite well, with the opening poll having:

 

Alabama- 1st

Arkansas - 5th

Kentucky - 6th

Texas A&M - 10th

Tennessee - 21st

and Missouri and LSU receiving votes.

 

4 of the top-10 teams easily was more than any other conference (2) so we were already looking good.

The season was a long battle though, with more than a few ups and downs. I would like to congratulate Kentucky in particular for finishing a perfect regular season and defeating Alabama for the conference championship.

 

The related low-light was that while we had the preseason national champion favorite, without a coach, the two late losses to Tennessee (WOO HELL YEAH) and Kentucky dropped Alabama just enough to miss the playoff.

Having the #2 seed in the playoff was a great achievement, but I think we all expected to get more than 1 team into the top-12, but again, congratulations to the Kentucky Wildcats and coach Rabid for making it to the semifinals.

 

Final regular season Elo rankings saw the SEC at #2 (Kentucky), #9 (Alabama), #20 (TAMU), #23 (Tennessee), and #24 (Mississippi State).

 

It's clear that we saw a little bit of slippage throughout the year, and I promise that in the years to come we will look back and see this as the beginning of our ascent to dominance.

 

Recruiting Results

 

One of the reasons I am so hopeful for the future of our conference is the talented recruiting grounds and skilled coaches we have. Recruiting is what will bring us success, and boy did we have a lot of it. In the first recruiting cycle our schools finished:

 

#1 - Tennessee

#4 - Texas A&M

#8 - Missouri

#9 - Kentucky

#15 - LSU

#29 - UGA

and #34 - Arkansas

 

Somewhat cheekily, I expect the post-season results to look similar to this within a few years (or even moreso with Alabama coming along)

 

Draft Results

 

I'd also like to take another moment here to highlight the success of our programs in sending players to the NFL. Not only did we have 37 draft picks, 7 more than the next best conference, we also had the school with the most draft picks (7 from Arkansas), 3rd most (tie involving Auburn and TAMU with 5), and 10th most (Alabama and Kentucky with 4)

We also had EVERY SINGLE SCHOOL with at least 1 draft selection, which again no other conference can say.

 

Off-season Coaching Moves

 

This past off-season saw a net positive effect on the conference, with some internal and external moves.

 

First - Congratulations to coach @Weeze for moving from Arkansas to Florida to get the SEC East to 6/7 full (pls somebody take South Carolina, they need help)

Second - (and by far the most important move) Alabama secured the biggest headhunting job of the past decade, hiring coach @thatfunk from THE Ohio State University, meaning the most talented roster in the country now has one of the most talented coaches, and I think they very much do not want to miss the playoffs again

Third - Another SEC East team filled their vacancy as Vanderbilt hired @Sportskk11

Fourth - Ole Miss secured the services of head coach @SlapYourBasil

 

2022 Outlook

 

Taking a look at the upcoming season, we do expect that while a lot of it is young talent, our conference has some of the best-positioned rosters to compete in the upcoming years as players age up.

By overall roster rankings:

 

#1 - Alabama

#12 - Kentucky

#17 - Missouri

#24 - Texas A&M

#26 - LSU

 

We also want to take pride in the fact that we currently have 10 coaches, more than any other conference in the nation.

 

We are also scheduling quite nicely, with some big OOC matchups to watch in:

 

Week 0: Kentucky vs. Wake Forest (Big matchup in terms of talent!)

Week 1: Missouri vs. North Carolina, Tennessee vs. Bowling Green, LSU vs. Houston

Week 2: Tennessee vs. Florida State, LSU vs. UNLV, Texas A&M vs. Cal, Auburn vs. Texas, Arkansas vs. Wisconsin

Week 3: Georgia vs. SMU, Florida vs. Nebraska, Alabama vs. Tulsa, Texas A&M vs. Houston

Week 5: Alabama vs. Purdue

Week 13: Vanderbilt vs. Wake Forest

and of course rivalry week 14 with some highlights: Florida vs. Florida State and Texas A&M vs. Texas

 

Wrapup

While I wanted to take this opportunity to fellate ourselves, let us not forget that it has only been one season and the best is yet to come. I applaud all the work done by the coaches so far, and know there will be many more success stories in the seasons ahead. Best of luck to all, and we will adjourn with our standard daily chant.

 

S-E-C. S-E-C. S-E-C.

It just means more

Edited July 6, 2022 by tsweezy

[Weeze]

Everytime I see one of these i die a little inside. Did I make a mistake leaving Arkansas for Florida? Arky keeps looking like it was on the up and up(especially with a better recruiting cycle) despite underperforming last season.

 

Florida on the other hand looks like it’s gonna be a hard reset and a slow rebuild. It’s gonna be tapped just for 6 wins.

[tsweezy]

Switch back ?

[Coach123]

This made me want to join. But I'm a loner and a loners gotta be alone.

[tsweezy]

Anonymous sources leak to ESPN: "Notre Dame expresses interest in joining the SEC??? where is conference realignment going to take us"