On Sunday, the SEC set a college football record with 12 teams selected to bowl games. The show of strength capped off yet another strong season for the SEC in a year that it felt like the conference had no dominant team.

Despite that prevailing feeling, the College Football Playoff committee chose Alabama as its No. 1 team. The Crimson Tide earned a marquee matchup with former foe Urban Meyer and the Ohio State Buckeyes, who marched into the playoff despite losing two quarterbacks and a game to Virginia Tech.

The only team to beat Alabama, Ole Miss, earned a New Year’s Six bowl invite, the only team with fewer than 10 wins to get there. The Rebels’ big wins — over Alabama and over Mississippi State — were apparently far more impressive to the committee than their losses, two of them narrow defeats against SEC opposition.

Perhaps the team that got the most respect from the committee was Mississippi State, a team that started the year on a dream run but lost two of its final three SEC contests. Despite having the weekend off, the Bulldogs leapt up three spots in the final CFP rankings, earning them a date with ACC runner-up Georgia Tech.

Obviously, some teams were going to end up in undesirable places, especially with the SEC’s seeming insistence on keeping Texas A&M and Texas separated like the family members who can’t get along at a holiday gathering. Still, the conference had its choice on where to put teams, and there aren’t any bad opponents among the mix.

Every bowl-eligible SEC team but Florida drew a Power Five opponent, and even the Gators got one of the best teams outside of that group in its matchup with East Carolina. The Pirates have knocked off two of their three Power Five opponents; not bad for the AAC’s fourth-place finisher.

Say what you will about the SEC’s relative strength this year — it certainly looked less dominant by the end of the season than any year since the run of seven straight BCS championships began — but the SEC will likely be favored to win the majority of its bowl games. Alabama opened up as a 9.5-point favorite over Ohio State, while ESPN’s Football Power Index has 11 of the 12 SEC teams favored.

Some teams, like Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri and Auburn, ended up in more high-profile games than expected. Some, like Georgia, are probably rightly disappointed. Even the teams that find themselves in lower-profile games are still going to be among the best teams their opponents will face off against all year.

That says plenty about the SEC’s continued position at the top of college football.