USA TODAY’s Blake Toppmeyer delved into the SEC football history books and earlier this week revealed his own SEC all-time power rankings, from 1 to 16.
With the 2026 college football season about a month and a half from starting and with fall camps getting cranked up very soon, Toppmeyer gave SEC football fans something to chew on as they anxiously await the return of the sport they live and breathe year-round.
Toppmeyer’s list is sure to get a rise out of a few and ruffle the feathers of a few others, because it’s 1 man’s opinion. Not surprisingly, Toppmeyer topped his SEC list with the program that’s arguably at the top of the entire college football food chain — Alabama. The Crimson Tide haven’t won a national title in 6 years, which is an eternity for Bama fans, but they have more than enough hardware to keep them warm at night, including Nick Saban‘s 6 national titles that he ripped off during his 17-year run in Tuscaloosa.
At No. 2 was Oklahoma, which isn’t an SEC blue blood because the Sooners didn’t join the conference until 2024. But this list doesn’t factor that in. It’s about all-time achievement, no matter when the school joined the SEC, and the Sooners have done a lot of achieving and winning in their proud history.
The other college football powerhouse to join the SEC in 2024, Oklahoma’s ancient rival Texas, came in at No. 3 on the USA TODAY list. Georgia, which has won the past 2 SEC titles to go with national titles in 2021 and 2022, was at No. 4, with LSU rounding out the top 5.
The rest of the list from 6 to 16 was filled with SEC programs that still have plenty of tradition, and here is that complete list that’s sure to get a few people in the South talking until it’s time to play games again in late August.
The above SEC rankings have everything to do with the past. But in the present, all 16 SEC teams will be battling once again for conference supremacy in football this fall. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the teams with the best chance to be raising that SEC trophy in December:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
