as a real old guy who has watched the SEC since ancient times and who likes to study WHY, I see 5 teams that will dominate. The others will be in and out, and those 5 may have ups and downs, but the 5 will get it done.

These schools have the money, fan base, facilities, want, tradition, recruiting base, leadership and coaching to get to the top and stay there into the forseeable future:

bama
UGA
LSU
UF
Tamu

IMO at this point AU is higher than they can be expected to be into the future. They cannot keep pace altho they will torture any HC with demands to do so.

Tamu hasn't quite got its act together yet. This year's schedule is past brutal with road games at UGA and Clemson in addition to their SEC-W gauntlet. That will hold them down but only temporarily. They will throw money around, offered LSU's DC 3mil/yr.

UF is not a fluke, nor is the QB play an accident. Mullin is the best QB coach in the SEC and maybe the nation. DC is also top shelf, the challenge will be keeping him.

LSU is limited by lack of big people in the state, thus the shortage of OL. LSU will continue to draw from the east TX area for those; failure to do so will result in failure to stay up there but their national draw seems to overcome the drop.

The schedule should change, IMO, because it is unbalanced. Annual games among those Top Five:
bama 2
UGA 1
LSU 3
UF 2
Tamu 2

My proposal is for the SEC to have a rotating cross-division schedule and TWO games/yr vs Power 5 teams. If UGA wants to play AU every year allow them, that game could count as a Power 5 game but not a SEC game in the years it is not scheduled as a regular rotated SEC game.

Thoughts?