Let’s call it what it is for the SEC — a golden era.

As the team in gold, LSU, celebrated a College World Series title against Florida, the 2022-23 school year closed in the same way that it did last year … and the year before that. Another SEC team was the last team standing in Omaha. What else is new? It’s been 5 years since a non-SEC team stood atop the college baseball world.

This fall, you’ll be able to say the same thing about college football. It’ll have been 5 years since Clemson beat the brakes off Alabama to close the 2018 season. Since then, 3 different schools claimed 4 national titles.

And in the 2020s, the SEC claimed 2 of the 3 women’s hoops titles. The last 2 of which came by South Carolina taking down mighty UConn and LSU taking down mighty Caitlin Clark.

As for men’s basketball, well, the SEC can’t win everything.

But think about that. In 3 of the 4 big revenue sports, the SEC is riding a multi-year title streak. If we just count the national championships in those sports since the start of the 2020-21 school year (basically post-COVID cancelations), the SEC owns 8 of 12 those titles:

  • SEC, 8:
    • 2020 Alabama football
    • 2021 MSU baseball
    • 2021 Georgia football
    • 2022 South Carolina women’s basketball
    • 2022 Ole Miss baseball
    • 2022 Georgia football
    • 2023 LSU women’s basketball
    • 2023 LSU baseball
  • Big 12, 2
    • 2021 Baylor men’s basketball
    • 2022 Kansas men’s basketball
  • Big East, 1:
    • 2023 UConn men’s basketball
  • Pac-12, 1:
    • 2021 Stanford women’s basketball

That’s stunning. The 2020s have been good to the SEC, to say the least.

For all the talk about how the college sports landscape is about to be “the Power 2,” between the Big Ten and SEC, the national titles in the big revenue sports don’t reflect that in any way. In the 2022-23 school year alone, the SEC won as many titles in those respective sports (3) as the Big Ten has in the entire 21st century.

And actually, if you’re only including school years that began in the 21st century, you can’t count 1999-2000 Michigan State men’s basketball towards the Big Ten’s total, meaning that 2022-23 LSU just matched the Big Ten’s entire 21st century big revenue titles.

Yeah, that’s even more stunning.

Six of the SEC’s 14 current programs won a national title in a big revenue sport since the start of the 2020-21 school year. Including 2021 Vanderbilt baseball and 2023 Florida baseball, 8 of the 14 SEC schools have played in a national championship in a big revenue sport in that stretch. And for those 6 SEC schools who haven’t been to at least 1 national championship since the start of the 2020-21 school year, here’s when their last big revenue sport national championship appearance came:

  • Arkansas: 2018 baseball
  • Kentucky: 2014 men’s basketball
  • Auburn: 2013 football
  • Tennessee: 2008 women’s basketball
  • Mizzou: (none as SEC member)
  • Texas A&M: (none as SEC member)

So excluding Mizzou and A&M, who joined the SEC in the 2012-13 school year, all 12 of those longstanding SEC schools have competed in a big revenue national championship in the last 15 years. In fact, 11 of 12 have done so in the last decade (sorry Tennessee).

But let’s get back to the titles conversation because that’s really what we’re here to discuss.

This 2020s dominance is significant because of the changes we’ve seen in college athletics. NIL and the transfer portal have become staples of roster building in the 2020s. Any hope from non-SEC schools that we’d actually see a more leveled out playing field has already been squashed. Shoot, in the 2022-23 school year alone, we just watched non-SEC athletes like Angel Reese, Paul Skenes and Tommy White all transfer into the SEC (specifically LSU) and lead national championship efforts.

Is it possible that the combination of NIL and the transfer portal has tipped the scales even more in the SEC’s favor? Certainly. Here’s the breakdown of SEC titles in the 4 big revenue sports by decade since the start of the 1990-91 school year:

  • 1990s: 15 (1991 Tennessee women’s basketball, 1991 LSU baseball, 1992 Alabama football, 1993 LSU baseball, 1994 Arkansas men’s basketball, 1996 Kentucky men’s basketball, 1996 Tennessee women’s basketball, 1996 LSU baseball, 1996 Florida football, 1997 Tennessee women’s basketball, 1997 LSU baseball, 1998 Kentucky men’s basketball, 1998 Tennessee women’s basketball, 1998 Tennessee football, 2000 LSU baseball)
  • 2000s: 11 (2003 LSU football, 2006 Florida men’s basketball, 2006 Florida football, 2007 Florida men’s basketball, 2007 Tennessee women’s basketball, 2007 LSU football, 2008 Tennessee women’s basketball, 2008 Florida football, 2009 LSU baseball, 2009 Alabama football, 2010 South Carolina baseball)
  • 2010s: 12 (2010 Auburn football, 2011 South Carolina baseball, 2011 Alabama football, 2012 Kentucky men’s basketball, 2012 Alabama football, 2014 Vanderbilt baseball, 2015 Alabama football, 2017 South Carolina women’s basketball, 2017 Florida baseball, 2017 Alabama football, 2019 Vanderbilt baseball, 2019 LSU football)
  • 2020s (through 2022-23 school year): 8 (2020 Alabama football, 2021 MSU baseball, 2021 Georgia football, 2022 South Carolina women’s basketball, 2022 Ole Miss baseball, 2022 Georgia football, 2023 LSU women’s basketball, 2023 LSU baseball)

So basically, the SEC is averaging 2.67 big revenue titles per school year in the 2020s. That’s a pace of roughly 27 titles in the 2020s decade. Will that continue? Probably not.

Then again, we know the SEC is about to begin a new media contract with ESPN in 2024, which will be worth $3 billion over 10 years (that was negotiated pre-Oklahoma/Texas move). As crazy as its sounds, those resources available will only increase in the latter part of the decade. The rich are about to get richer.

Of course, the favored currency in the SEC is national titles. Those are worth their weight in gold.

Needless to say, the SEC isn’t lacking that during this golden era.