Southeastern Conference football is a source of great debate.

Some shout SEC bias, while others defend the credentials the conference garnered during the BCS era, winning nine of 16 BCS national championships.

Now that the regular season is over, what are national writers saying about the conference?

ESPN’s Ivan Maisel blasted the conference in a column written Monday, claiming the SEC’s run of dominance — and its title as the best conference in college football — is gone.

Said Maisel:

The best running backs in the FBS play in the Big Ten. The best quarterbacks are in the Pac-12. So are the best defensive linemen. The ACC skunked you 4-0 this past Saturday. The Big 12 is the only conference with a chance of putting two teams in the playoff.

Maisel didn’t just stop at debunking the play in the SEC, essentially saying the league has no stars. He goes as far as to say the apparent downfall of the big, bad SEC was right around the corner and we knew it.

We should have seen this coming. In fact, we did. The SEC lost 61 underclassmen to the NFL draft in the past two springs. Ole Miss senior Bo Wallace opened the season as the only league quarterback with more than a year of starting experience. 

And then the season began, and every SEC West team except for Arkansas started winning, and we left all of that cold data to chase hot teams.

Texas A&M beat No. 9 South Carolina, so the Aggies must be a national power. 

Mississippi State beat Texas A&M, LSU and Auburn, top-10 teams all, so the Bulldogs must be a national power

Ole Miss beat Alabama, so the Rebels must be playoff-caliber.

Andrea Adelson covers the ACC for the Worldwide Leader. She wrote a piece following the ACC’s undefeated weekend against its SEC counterparts, imploring fans that good football teams exist outside the sphere of the Southeastern Conference.

Said Adelson:

There is fact. And there is spin. And there are those who want to discredit facts with spin.

Fact: The ACC went 4-0 against the SEC on Saturday, the first time in 14 years it swept its conference rivals.

Spin: But it was against the miserable SEC East.

Adelson — who’s been with ESPN.com since 2010 — pointed out the double-standard facing the ACC, and the “little brother” mentality often taken when viewing it in light of the SEC.

Critics want to laugh and point at the Coastal Division as one of the biggest weighs holding down the ACC. Yet SEC fans seem ready to completely disown the East Division after a mediocre season. You can’t just toss aside seven teams when they don’t fit the glossy narrative that has been unabashedly hawked over the past 10 years. Family is family, warts and all. SEC East is SEC, warts and all. For fun, though, go ahead and check the ACC Coastal and SEC East division standings. You will find far more balance in the Coastal than the East.

But balance conveniently gets spun into mediocrity where the ACC is concerned. The ACC has five teams with nine or more wins. So does the SEC. The ACC has one team in position to make the College Football Playoff. So does the SEC.

Amari Cooper had a record-setting night against Auburn in the 55-44 win over the Tigers, cementing himself as a finalist for the Heisman Trophy. Sports Illustrated’s Zac Ellis explains how Cooper could win the award:

Follow the Iron Bowl with a monster performance against Missouri in the SEC Championship Game. Cooper finished the regular season strong against Auburn, but Heisman contenders step up in the biggest moments … However, like Gordon, Cooper will need some help from Mariota to win the Heisman … Cooper may have a better shot at overtaking Gordon for the runner-up spot than reaching Mariota. 

Missouri wrapped up its second consecutive SEC East title on Friday in the win over Arkansas. Tony Barnhart, SEC Network analyst and Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist, warned that the Tigers are capable of upsetting No. 1 Alabama.

If you think it’s going to be a walk in the park for the Crimson Tide, then you haven’t been paying attention to the Tigers. Yes I know they lost to dreadful Indiana. I know they lost 34-0 at home to Georgia … But I also know that Missouri won at Texas A&M, at Tennessee and beat Arkansas to lock down the SEC East.

Alabama completed an 11-1 regular season by allowing 44 points and 630 yards of offense, and won. Sporting News’ Matt Hayes discusses how Alabama keeps on winning, despite having to find different ways to do so.

Therein lies the beautiful dichotomy with this Alabama team. As un-Saban as it looks, it’s Saban’s best coaching job of all. Of all the seasons and all the championships and all the fantastic football that has played out at Alabama under Saban, none has been more impressive than what he has molded this fall.

Ole Miss dominated Mississippi State on Saturday, expelling the Bulldogs from SEC West and playoff contention. All that remains, writes Grantland’s Matt Hinton, is pride and the inability to escape the shadows of That School Up North for the next year.

In the aftermath, pride is all that remains. At 10-2, the best team in Mississippi State history is, ultimately, just another also-ran: The Bulldogs can still set a school record for wins in their bowl game, but with two losses in their last three games (at the hands of Alabama and Ole Miss), there will be no SEC title, no playoff bid, and — for another year, at least — no escaping the shadows cast by their closest neighbors in Oxford and Tuscaloosa.