Plenty of non-Alabama fans around the SEC were happy to see the Crimson Tide capture yet another national championship Monday, as defeating Clemson put an exclamation point on a decade of dominance by the conference.

Following a two-year hiatus with Florida State and then Ohio State winning it all in 2013 and 2014, respectively, ‘Bama has now given the SEC eight titles in the past 10 seasons — half of them delivered by coach Nick Saban and the Tide. Couple that with a record eight teams that emerged victorious in bowl games over the course of the holiday season, and the conference appears to be as healthy as ever.

However, the distance between Alabama and the other 13 member schools of the SEC is only getting wider, as no program has found a way to noticeably narrow the gap.

Consider the fact that Alabama is the only team that qualified for the College Football Playoff in each of the first two years of its existence, as Ohio State, Florida State and Oregon were on the outside looking in this time around. Even more impressive, the Crimson Tide did so with a pair of first-year starting quarterbacks in Blake Sims and Jake Coker — neither is regarded as a legitimate NFL prospect.

The Seminoles and Ducks, on the other hand, lost seven outings between them this season after Jameis Winston left Tallahassee and Marcus Mariota departed Eugene to become the first two picks in the draft.

As for the rest of the SEC, while a team will bubble up every now and then to threaten ‘Bama in the West, nobody has been able to compete with Saban and Co. on an annual basis. Yes, Ole Miss has topped the Tide twice in a row — last year at home, this year on the road — but neither time the Rebels were able to finish the job in the division and make their way to the conference championship game.

Corey Clark of the Tallahassee Democrat came to a simple conclusion after Alabama put the clamps on Clemson in the fourth quarter at University of Phoenix Stadium.

“The SEC isn’t great,” he wrote in his Tuesday column. “Nick Saban is.”

In all seriousness, who is in position to unseat Alabama at the head of the table and perhaps spread the wealth a bit in the conference?

Well, there’s … yeah, but …

As far as its rivals in the West are concerned, Ole Miss is the first school that comes to mind with QB Chad Kelly recently announcing he will return to Oxford for his senior season. But even with coach Hugh Freeze killing it on the recruiting trail — he currently has the No. 2 class nationally for 2016 according to Rivals.com — OT Laremy Tunsil, WR Laquon Treadwell and DT Robert Nkemdiche are all exiting early for the draft.

LSU returns Heisman Trophy front-runner Leonard Fournette in the backfield, but it also returns an outdated philosophy after coach Les Miles survived his coup attempt and opted for the status quo offensively.

Mississippi State is hitting the reset button since dual-threat passer Dak Prescott, maybe the single best player to ever lace ’em up in Starkville, is out of eligibility. The same can be said for Arkansas, as quarterback Brandon Allen — perhaps the most underrated performer in the SEC for 2015 — hopes to be a draft pick and running back Alex Collins bolted for the pros after his junior campaign.

Texas A&M is so busy installing turnstiles on campus that it’s difficult to keep up with the list of comings and goings at this point.

That leaves Auburn. The Crimson Tide’s chief enemy. The Tigers seem to have completely lost the explosiveness on offense that took them to the title game two years ago. Jeremy Johnson proved to be one of the most overhyped athletes in recent memory. And hiring Kevin Steele to fix the defense doesn’t exactly sell stability — this is his third job in three years after short stints at Alabama and LSU.

As for the East, it remains by far the inferior division.

Returning champ Florida is a hot mess at quarterback and loses a ton of talent on defense. Georgia is breaking in a new coach — it’s Kirby Smart, of course, Saban’s latest protégé, but he’s never been a head coach at any level. South Carolina has a new coach. So does Missouri. Kentucky can’t gain any momentum from one season to the next no matter who’s in charge. Vanderbilt is, well, Vanderbilt.

Sure, Tennessee brings back most of its key components from a team that led Alabama in the fourth quarter at Bryant-Denny Stadium, but we’re talking about an outfit that just topped seven wins for the first time since 2007.

The machine rolls on

While ‘Bama has to replace Coker, Heisman-winning running back Derrick Henry and All-American center Ryan Kelly on offense, Saban has never had a stud QB and the ground game will always be a pillar of strength — Henry followed T.J. Yeldon, who followed Eddie Lacy, who followed Trent Richardson, who followed Mark Ingram, who followed Glen Coffee. All were 1,000-yard rushers and drafted into the league.

Defensively, for every former blue-chip recruit that gets selected in Round 1, yet another four- or five-star signee is waiting in the wings at seemingly every position.

Just keeping the Crimson Tide out of the SEC Championship Game the past eight years has required Cam Newton authoring a historic comeback (2010), LSU surviving an OT slugfest (2011) or Auburn returning a miracle kick-six (2013). While ‘Bama has five appearances in the title game since 2008, nobody else in the West has more than five going back to its inception in 1992 — potential spoiler Ole Miss hasn’t been once.

Whatever the margin is between the SEC and every other conference in America, the margin between Alabama and every other institution in the league is twice as large.

“Please quit riding Alabama’s coattails,” Clark wrote. “Go add some trophies to the case if you want to brag about your conference.”

Enough with the “S-E-C!” chants. A rising Tide lifts all boats.