For those of us who cover the SEC for a living, the conference missing out on a national championship berth is the ultimate “what do I do with my hands?”

For just the second time since Vince Young waltzed into the end zone to knock off USC, the national championship will be SEC-less. That’s 16 of 18 seasons in which the SEC has had at least 1 seat at the table. In those 18 national championship games, 19 SEC teams appeared. That’s including the 2011, 2017 and 2021 seasons that produced all-SEC national championship games. From 2006-23, 13 of the 18 national champs came from the SEC.

You know this. You also know that 2005, 2014 and 2023 were the last instances in which the SEC didn’t have a team competing for a title. If you did some quick math, you realized that it happens once every 9 years. It’s not quite Halley’s Comet, but it’s rare.

So should we make sweeping declarations about that? Let’s not.

Let’s instead provide some realistic perspective on what it means. As Greg Sankey said ahead of the SEC Championship, “one of these things is not like the other.” In this context, that applies to the SEC-less national championship games. Assuming that the SEC is about to revert to 1999-2005 when it had just 1 BCS National Championship participant would be foolish, as would assuming that the conference is about to rip off 7 consecutive national titles like it did from 2006-12.

One would think that the 12-team Playoff will reward talent and depth. The SEC still has that in spades. In the 247sports talent composite, SEC programs had 6 of the top 10 rosters in 2023. That’s including Texas and Oklahoma. It’s worth noting that 2023 will be the first season that’ll produce a national champion that ranked outside of the top 10 (Michigan is No. 14 and Washington is No. 26). Is it still better to have more talent? Absolutely. That hasn’t changed in the NIL/transfer portal era.

What has perhaps changed is how teams without gobs of 5-star talent like Washington, TCU and Florida State can be part of the title conversation. Ole Miss and Mizzou have entered that discussion. Both could start as top-10 teams this year after winning New Year’s 6 bowls.

If the SEC went 2-7 in bowl season with a bunch of lopsided bowl losses, there’d be a lot of overreacting. But until the sun went down on New Year’s Day, the SEC had a clear leg up on the Big Ten. The SEC was 4-1 against the Big Ten with a trio of 10-win teams all losing to SEC teams by multiple scores. The SEC won 3 of the 6 New Year’s 6 bowl games and had 4 teams reach 11 wins.

Of course, it’s hard to say that’s a flex when current Big Ten team (Michigan) and future Big Ten team (Washington) are playing for the national title. It’s more that nothing suggested this was some steep drop-off year for the SEC, even with an underwhelming showing in nonconference play.

What the SEC can always brag about is that it was never left out of the 4-team Playoff. Even when 2023 created the perfect storm to leave the conference out, the selection committee still made sure that the SEC got a seat at the table. A 14-3 record in Playoff games (now it’s 14-4) might’ve played a part in that. That’s not just Alabama, either. Georgia and LSU gave the SEC 3 teams that won Playoff games in the 4-team era. It took until Year 10 of the Playoff for any of the other Power 5 conferences to get a second team record a semifinal win.

Depth is still on the SEC’s side. In the immediate future, that’s also the case.

Here’s a question — how many SEC teams will start in the top 5 of the AP Poll in 2024? Four?

Quarterback decisions from JJ McCarthy and Quinn Ewers could factor into that, but Alabama and Georgia are locks. Ole Miss and Texas could be on their way to doing that, and Mizzou is in position to return a ton of offensive talent from an 11-win team. That means we could see 5 SEC teams starting off in the top 7.

In other words, no, I don’t foresee this turning into SEC basketball, which has performed well in the regular season but is still in search of its first Final Four team in the 2020s.

For a while, I wondered if the SEC in 2023 was a bit like it was in 2016. That year, the conference only produced 1 team with double-digit wins. And of course, when it’s Alabama, nobody is going to crown the SEC for that. The Tide reached the title game that year, but Auburn was the only other New Year’s 6 bowl participant, and it lost by 16 to Oklahoma. Nothing about that year suggested that the conference was ready to embark on another run. But from 2017-2022, 5 of the 6 national title winners came from 3 different SEC schools and 8 of the 12 title-game participants came from the SEC.

Sometimes, down years happen. In college football, it doesn’t become a trend until it happens repeatedly for several seasons. From 2017-22, the Pac-12 couldn’t get a team into the field. From 2014-21, the Big 12 couldn’t win a Playoff game. From 2015-19, the Big Ten didn’t win a Playoff game and its conference champ got left out of the field from 2016-18.

The SEC’s down years are magnified because when you’ve dominated the sport like the conference has for nearly 2 decades, those opportunities are few and far between. Despite what the naysayers will tell you, the sky isn’t falling. It just wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the SEC in 2023.

If you’re watching the national championship on Monday night and you find yourself in an argument with an SEC naysayer, 1 line is the walk-off.

One of these things is not like the other.