Maybe it’s because the mighty SEC bowed out in the College Football Playoff semifinals.

Maybe it’s because of the perception that the SEC is devoid of big-time quarterback play.

Maybe it’s because of the rise of the Big Ten with coaches like Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh.

Maybe it’s because the mighty SEC West finished 2-5 in bowl season, including abysmal performances by Ole Miss and Mississippi State on New Year’s Eve.

Whatever the case, the national media’s narrative about the SEC underwent a dramatic shift this offseason. Cries of “SEC bias” have evolved into headlines questioning whether the SEC could miss the playoff altogether.

About last year’s talk of two SEC teams in the same playoff, ESPN’s Alex Scarborough wrote “that talk is gone. It’s disappeared. Now we’re left to wonder if even one team from the SEC will be in good enough shape when the time comes.”

He’s hardly the only writer pontificating on the topic in recent weeks. A sampling:

NFL.com — “Dismal QB crop will keep SEC from returning to top”

“For a league that prides itself on football superlatives, the 2015 crop of quarterbacks the SEC is about to put forward could be positively dismal. We know little to nothing about what half the league will start under center, because seven of the league’s 14 teams enter fall camp this week in search of an answer at the position: Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt. And the schools that have an answer don’t necessarily have a good one.”

Grantland.com — “College Football Identity Crisis: The SEC West Faces The Stress Test”

In his comprehensive narrative about the SEC, and especially the West Division, that encapsulates several seasons, Matt Hinton makes two excellent points.

First, the conference is stocked with teams likely to rank in the preseason Top 25 every year, regardless of actual talent, thanks to sheer expectations. Second, it may even be likely that none of this year’s SEC West teams are good enough to avoid carnage and escape the SEC Championship Game with fewer than two losses.

Hinton also pointed out that a handful of early-season games and another handful of bowl games aren’t enough to determine conference superiority, that every power conference holds similar tiers of programs and that what sets apart the SEC is the fluidity by which some programs ascend and descend from the top to middle class.

He broached a subject that’s taboo at SEC watering holes and stadiums: the conference missing the playoff altogether.

“That level of top-to-bottom parity has never been the case in the past, even in the years when the SEC West was feted as the deepest, most unforgiving conference in the nation. And therein lies the rub: If Alabama, Auburn, and LSU remain as loaded as Alabama, Auburn, and LSU always expect to be, and Arkansas, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M are all trending up with improving talent bases in their own right, as nearly everyone assumes they are, how can any of the above be expected to emerge in December with its playoff résumé intact?

“The simple answer is maybe none of them will. … This time last year, even broaching the possibility that the SEC’s best bets might wind up mutually fratriciding themselves out of the final four would have fallen somewhere between trolling and sacrilege. This year, the only place that still seems true is among the conference stakeholders themselves. 

“… until it actually happens, the odds of the SEC being shut out of the final four altogether remain farfetched. But after the way last year ended, suddenly it’s not that difficult to imagine.”

ESPN.com — “SEC getting a pass when it comes to quarterback”

Nick Saban summed up much of the feeling about several SEC teams (Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss and Georgia, to name a few) in discussing the quarterback competition in Tuscaloosa.

“I don’t think that we need to have a quarterback that needs to win the game,” Saban said, according to ESPN. “I think that if we could have someone who could play well enough and make good choices … that probably would keep us in the game. With the rest of the players that we have, I think we’d have a good chance.”

ESPN wrote that the SEC is relying on recent precedent with mindsets like that. But reality could be a bit harsher.

“The SEC, meanwhile, is coasting on faith. If the quarterbacks don’t pay off and the SEC doesn’t reach the playoff, all that benefit of the doubt could be for nothing.”

THE TRUTH

If you want the unvarnished truth, the SEC is the best conference in college football. My any measurable metric, the SEC holds a significant lead, including recruiting, NFL draft picks, All-Americans and attendance.

But it did get lucky in winning seven consecutive national championships — with the BCS title format and with the sequential emergence of Meyer’s Florida and Saban’s Tide.

Still, Mississippi State, picked last in the SEC West by the media, nearly cracked the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll and boasts of the conference’s best quarterback in Dak Prescott.

At least three SEC East schools have designs on finishing the year in the Top 25, and two others — Florida and Kentucky — are recruiting well enough to be better next season.

In fairness, the SEC’s quarterbacks aren’t as deep as they were in 2013 when players like AJ McCarron, Aaron Murray, Johnny Manziel, Nick Marshall, Zach Mettenberger, Connor Shaw and James Franklin all played. But that was an all-time great group.

The biggest difference is the lack of a dominant team. An SEC team has been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 every year since 2006. This season, Ohio State is the clear national favorite. TCU or Baylor should relegate Alabama to at least third in the poll, which gets released Sunday.

But the Tide, Auburn Tigers and Georgia Bulldogs all are legitimate national title contenders, assuming those teams don’t eliminate each other as part of some weird destructive circle. And the conference’s middle class is as strong as it has been maybe ever. SEC Network money allows nearly every program to foot the bill for elite facilities and top-notch coaches.

I’m with Saban, whom I’ll paraphrase. If you’re judging only by national championships, then yes. The SEC is down. And may stay down for at least another year. But if you’re measuring against other conferences at spots eight through 12, good luck finding an equivalent.

Whether the SEC wins the second-ever College Football Playoff is irrelevant. If the SEC is “down,” it’s due to fact-selection bias from the person writing the narrative.

The Big Ten is getting very competitive, and the best programs in the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 still are capable of taking down anyone in the SEC. But the latter remains the conference with the most talent, highest-paid coaches, best facilities and most passionate fans.