Nick Saban has turned Alabama into undeniably the best program in the country. But in doing so, he has hurt the SEC as a whole, Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wetzel wrote Tuesday.

“The once mighty SEC is dead. (Well, at least for this year.) The league consists of Alabama and a whole lot of mediocre-at-best. What was once the nation’s deepest, most competitive conference in football is a shell of itself, a parade of the down and the defeated, so far behind the Crimson Tide that this weekend’s SEC championship game is essentially an exhibition contest. Alabama can lose and still make the playoff.”

Wetzel claimed Saban “hasn’t just dominated the competition but destroyed it,” which is backed up by the Crimson Tide’s 8-0 record in SEC play with a 23.3-point average margin of victory.

The columnist also pointed to the rest of the league’s lack of success against Power 5 schools and the current AP Top 25, but that’s not his biggest point.

Wetzel cited knee-jerk coaching changes and hires set in the model of Saban, particularly his former assistants like Florida’s Jim McElwain, Georgia’s Kirby Smart and South Carolina’s Will Muschamp. He suggests “league schools seem intent not on finding the next great coach, but the next Saban.”

Top-tier coaches like Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier have left the SEC while up-and-coming coaches like Jimbo Fisher and Tom Herman turned down chances to take the LSU job, prompting Wetzel to rhetorically ask if Saban is “scaring away the region’s best potential hires.”

Saban’s Alabama teams have crushed SEC opponents on the field, but perhaps he’s doing it off the field as well.