Reality will set in soon after the private planes start landing in Atlanta for SEC Media Days.

So many news faces, new personalities, new expectations.

So much success, too.

Three SEC head coaches have played for the national championship. (Two have won.) That number could grow to four (with three winners) if Georgia captures its second national title in January.

Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher, Gus Malzahn and perhaps Kirby Smart. That’s quite the quartet. And that’s not all either. The SEC reinvented itself in December. It added offensive firepower — Fisher, Chad Morris and Joe Moorhead — and more defensive acumen — Jeremy Pruitt. It retained Dan Mullen, though he moved from Starkville to Gainesville, literally going West to East.

The SEC’s coaching depth has been a frequent target in recent years. Now? It’s not so easy to do.

The question is, with six hires, does the SEC now have the best coaching lineup in the country?

That’s something we’ve been discussing all week.

Connor O’Gara, senior national columnist: Call me a yankee, but I think top to bottom, that title still belongs to the B1G. The SEC might have a slightly better top-4 coaches (Saban, Smart, Malzahn, Fisher), but I think 5-14, the B1G would have the bigger advantage.

Why? Well, look at the programs that aren’t considered “national powers.” Jeff Brohm is at Purdue, Pat Fitzgerald is at Northwestern and P.J. Fleck is at Minnesota. The longest-tenured coach in college football, Kirk Ferentz, wins a lot more with less than he gets credit for and Paul Chryst won consecutive B1G Coach of the Year awards after leading Wisconsin to consecutive New Year’s 6 berths. Add to the fact that Mike Riley was just replaced by Scott Frost, and I think that B1G’s 5-14 advantage is greater than the SEC’s 1-4 advantage.

I still believe Jim Harbaugh and Mark Dantonio are both top-10 coaches nationally, while Urban Meyer is still cranking out New Year’s 6 berths on a yearly basis. I get that Jimbo Fisher’s addition boosts the conference’s coaching stock, and the crop of up-and-coming coaches in the SEC have promise.

But to me, if we’re talking about the conference with the best group of coaches, you can’t just cut off the ranking at the guys making $7 million per season. The B1G is still the leader of the pack until Nick Saban stops getting SEC coaches fired.

Jon Cooper, director of operations: Over the past several years, the Big Ten and the ACC have had some really good coaches. Now, however, the SEC has taken over as having the best coaches in the country. No. 2 is still the Big Ten, and it’s not far behind.

The gap between Nick Saban and Dan Mullen has been quite great over the past couple of seasons, but Jimbo Fisher has narrowed that gap sharply.

With the Big Ten already having Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh and Mark Dantonio, the addition of Scott Frost at Nebraska could help push the conference back to No. 1 soon. For now, though, the SEC goes back to No. 1 as we look ahead to 2018.

Jim Tomlin, SDS bowl expert: I’m going to give some love here to an often ignored Power 5 league: The Pac-12.

Chris Petersen at Washington is one of the brightest young coaches in the country. He led the Huskies to the College Football Playoff last season and another 10-win season this year. Stanford continues to be a strong program under David Shaw, who keeps proving that a good coach CAN win big at a school with stringent academic standards.

Mike Leach (below) has led a resurgence at Washington State and this year the Cougars finally had some semblance of a defense. Colorado’s Pac-12 South Division title last year might have been a one-year wonder but, still, Mike McIntyre has turned around what had been a poor program.

Credit: James Snook-USA TODAY Sports

There are some under-the-radar talents out West as well, such as Kyle Whittingham, who is about to take Utah to its 11th bowl in his 13 seasons in Salt Lake City. And how about giving a little credit to Clay Helton at USC. He took over after several years of chaos in the Trojans program, partly because of scholarship reductions, and has guided USC back to the to of the conference.

And every conference should have a “Huh, THAT’S interesting” type of hire from time to time. Arizona State did just that by bringing former NFL head coach Herm Edwards on board. How well will he do and will he recruit well? Who knows. His name alone should create some buzz.

But of course the offseason hire generating the most buzz in the Pac-12 is Chip Kelly, the former coach at Oregon and the new coach at UCLA. The Bruins have forever had access to all the talent a program could want in its back yard in Southern California — and for almost as long they have been chasing USC to try to land the best of it. Kelly might just be the guy who changes the dynamic in L.A.

Chris Wright, executive editor: For all of the B1G talk, there haven’t been a lot of B1G results. Ohio State remains the only B1G program to win a Playoff game (or even score a point). Nobody else in the conference has sniffed a national championship in decades.

It’s crazy to think that, if Smart wins, the SEC will enter next season with three national championship coaches — and one is guaranteed of not reaching the SEC Championship Game.

No other conference has even two coaches who have been to a national championship game.

The SEC’s head-to-head advantage extends well beyond coaches 1-4, too.

Mullen already has been a key part of two national titles at Florida, and he took Mississippi State to the highest point in program history.

Clearly, newcomers Morris, Moorhead and Pruitt are in prove-it mode, but their background suggests they’ll be successful.

Saban, Spurrier, Miles and Richt comprised quite the quartet, but beyond them, it was a non-stop carousel that compromised the league’s reputation.

Finally, we’ll have some stability. It’s certainly the best collection in the nation. I’m starting to wonder if it’s the best in league history, but we’ll save that discussion for another day.