Kevin Higgins

This is the culmination of a process that began at ESPN about 15 years ago. From the early 90s to 2006, college football's national champions came from every conference. Examples: the ACC (FSU), the Big East (Miami), the Big 12 (Nebraska, Texas), the PAC 12 (USC), and the SEC (Alabama, Florida). There were so many good teams from around the country. College football was really fun to follow. 2007 was the pinnacle. From 2006-2012, however, every national champion came from the SEC: Florida (2006), LSU (2007), Florida (2008), Alabama (2009), Auburn (2010), Alabama (2011), Alabama (2012). ESPN announced it was launching the SEC Network in 2013, and it launched in 2014. Right about that time, as anyone who used to watch College Football Live and ESPN Gameday can attest, ESPN pretty much quit talking about college football as a whole and started talking about the SEC, to the detriment of other teams and conferences. To be fair, Nick Saban's Alabama teams sucked all the air out of the room, because they changed college football and were so dominant. When they somehow failed to win a natty in any given year, some other SEC team happily filled in. Fast-forward to today, and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: ESPN and ABC give the best time slots to SEC games, while other conferences are shuffled off to ESPN2, ESPNU, and elsewhere; SEC games get better ratings, because they get better networks and windows; lather, rinse, repeat.