College football is finally back this week and the best conference in America takes center stage in Week 1, with a Saturday night showdown between LSU and Clemson the linchpin of a fun, 3-day Welcome Back Weekend.
The best conference in the land is still the SEC, for all you heathens in the north who think Ohio State, Michigan, and Indiana shuffling through national championships somehow means the B1G, where you get to play road games in quiet church atmospheres like Evanston, Illinois, has usurped the SEC’s overall speed, depth, and fan passion.
I’m not here to take anything away from the B1G. It’s a great conference and NIL has only made it stronger.
But if we’re just talking about Jimmies and Joes, the SEC had the most players drafted in the NFL Draft for the 20th consecutive year in 2026 and the number was a record-high 87 athletes. If you love watching the best players compete against the best players in the best environments, there’s simply no league in America like the SEC.
There’s also no “List” in America like the “List” here at SDS, which now enters its 8th year.
We don’t host a televised ceremony at a drafty athletic club in midtown Manhattan in the December cold, but who needs that fanfare anyway?
“The List” honors the best players in the SEC. It doesn’t care about position. It doesn’t care about preseason accolades. It doesn’t care about mock drafts.
It’s a list about production and performance and yes, a list about winning. The 7 champions of the list: Joe Burrow, DeVonta Smith, Nakobe Dean, Will Anderson Jr., Jayden Daniels, Dylan Sampson, and Diego Pavia, will echo through the generations, representing 6 SEC schools and playing 5 different positions (and counting).
They (who they are, that’s for you to figure out) call “The List” the “most prestigious list” in college football. Why?
To be crowned “List Champion,” you must power through the rigors of a SEC schedule, 14 weeks of Finebaum callers insisting “Trinidad Chambliss ain’t played no one, Pawwl,” 3-4 temporary restraining order hearings (I’m kidding, I think?), and the pesky whims of your faithful scribe, who has learned after 7 seasons and 2,345 emails or so from 14-16 fan bases that it’s a crime he gets to name the best 10 players in the SEC since he clearly hates every team that plays in the league.
What keeps me coming back? Love of the game, y’all. Love of the game.
With Week 1 at our fingertips, here are the top 10 players in the SEC entering the 2026 season. “Honorable Mentions” will come in Week 2, when we’ve played a little football. As always, honorable mentions will be limited to 2 per school.
10. David Stone, DT (Oklahoma)
A pocket collapsing tackle who also anchored one of the nation’s toughest run defenses in 2025, Stone is poised for a breakout 2026 where the things he puts on film and the way he alters how offenses must scheme to play Oklahoma also translate into big-time statistical productivity. Kip Lewis gets the headlines, but Stone and the OU front are the secret sauce behind one of America’s most fearsome fronts.
9. Jordan Seaton, OT (LSU)
Seaton will play an SEC schedule for the first time but he’s a dominant, athletic tackle who plays with tremendous balance and is a prolific pass protection guy already. Seaton surrendered only 2 pressures a year ago, earning All-Big 12 honors while grading out as one of the 10 best run blockers in the Big 12 as well, per PFF. With every physical, athletic tool in the book, Seaton is as exciting an offensive line prospect as there is in the country.
8. Ellis Robinson IV, CB (Georgia)
Kirby Smart’s best corner allowed completions on just 42% of plays when targeted in 2025, the second-best returning figure in the SEC, per PFF. Robinson picked up 4 interceptions and 7 pass breakups in 2025, and his ability to lock down one boundary allows Georgia to be aggressive and multiple in coverage, trusting one portion of the field is handled.
7.Trey’Dez Green, TE (LSU)
Essentially a wide receiver in a tight end body, Green is poised to become a household name in Lane Kiffin‘s up-tempo offense, which constantly finds ways to put the ball in the hands of its biggest mismatches. Look for a massive uptick in statistical output from Green, who caught 7 touchdowns for LSU in 2025 but was too often not a focal point of the Tigers’ passing game under Brian Kelly.
6. Bray Hubbard, S, Alabama
The Alabama captain earned All-American honors in 2025 starting 15 games at safety, intercepting 4 passes and breaking up a team-high 6 passes. Hubbard is also an outstanding tackler who ranked third on the Crimson Tide in tackles (79) and first in tackle percentage (top 5 in SEC in fewest missed tackles, per PFF).
One of the most versatile players in college football, he’ll anchor a terrific Crimson Tide defense again in 2026.
5. Jadan Baugh, RB (Florida)
Baugh was the bright spot in a lost season in Gainesville a season ago, ranking third in the SEC with 1,170 yards rushing and second in the league in yards after contact and missed tackles forced. Now playing in a competent offensive system under new coordinator Buster Faulkner, Baugh is surrounded by elite talent on the perimeter, too, meaning defenses that key on the run the way they did in 2026 will be punished. Retaining Baugh was the biggest early win for Jon Sumrall—who held off tampering efforts by a host of schools, including SEC programs—to keep Baugh’s services.
4. Kewan Lacy, RB (Ole Miss)
A great story illustrating the good that can be done by the transfer portal, Lacy transferred from Mizzou after the Tigers pondered a position change. He then went out and led the SEC in rushing touchdowns (20) and ranked second in rushing yards (1,279).
He’ll team up with another Rebel fixture on this list to try to return Ole Miss to the College Football Playoff this December.
3. Dylan Stewart, Edge (South Carolina)
A dominant athlete on the edge, Stewart’s 4.5 sacks don’t tell the whole story of his excellence. Facing double teams on over 50% of snaps in 2025, Stewart tallied 37 pressures and 27 quarterback hurries regardless of a season ago, tremendous numbers given the way teams prepare and scheme for him all week. One of the SEC’s handful of players who can single-handedly change a football game.
2. Colin Simmons, Edge (Texas)
Like Stewart, Simmons can dominate an entire football game by himself. The All-American tallied an SEC high 59 pressures in 2025 to go with 10 sacks. In 2026, he hopes to show he can hold the edge at a high level as a run defender as well, one of the few criticisms of the Texas-sized talent’s early career in the SEC.
1. Trinidad Chambliss, QB (Ole Miss)
Arguably the best returning player in college football, Chambliss can cap a rags-to-riches rise from Division II football to the Heisman ceremony with a season that even equals what he did a year ago, when he threw for nearly 4,000 yards, rushed for 500 more, and produced 30 touchdowns of total offense in leading Ole Miss to the College Football Playoff semifinals. He’s already answered questions about how much his success was tied to Kiffin, guiding the Rebels to the semifinals of the Playoff with Kiffin already in Baton Rouge. The next step? Immortality, perhaps.
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Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
