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Alabama not only won the SEC championship this season, it also won the title in the classroom as well.
The Crimson Tide ranked first among SEC schools in graduation success rate (GSR) and 6th among the final top 25 teams in the College Football Playoff rankings.
LSU was 2nd in the SEC behind Alabama and 10th among the others in the top 25.
Another poll wanted to take on-the-field success and mesh it with success in the classroom. The poll was conducted by Washington D.C.-area think tank New America, and it was published in Time Magazine.
It was derived by coming up with a teams’ “national ranking,” combining its College Football Playoff ranking and its GSR.
Alabama, which was No. 2 in the final CFP rankings, had a combined ranking of No. 2. The next-best SEC schools were Ole Miss (No. 11), LSU (No. 15), Florida (No. 17) and Tennessee (No. 23).
Clemson was ranked No. 1 in the football playoff poll, while Northwestern was No. 1 in the academic poll.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
