The standard was set so high.

Seven of eight national championships between 2006 and 2013.

This year’s national championship will mark the first time since Texas-USC in 2005 that the SEC hasn’t had a participant in college football’s biggest game.

So now that the SEC has been shut out of the national championship and its season is over, where exactly is the SEC?

Is its reign over?

Was 2014 merely an aberration?

There are several clear-cut reasons for the SEC’s perceived demise in 2014, and many of them valid, but it’s hardly a sign of long-term decline.

Lack of top QBs

Football’s most important position is a quarterback, and simply put, the SEC didn’t have many good ones in 2014.

Yes, there was Dak Prescott who was considered to be a Heisman Trophy candidate for while. Blake Sims for Alabama was certainly a pleasant surprise, but a senior quarterback like Bo Wallace was up-and-down to say the least.

The conference’s leading quarterback, South Carolina’s Dylan Thompson, was on a team that finished one game above .500.

Last year’s crop of QBs was going to be tough to match in 2014.

The SEC lost seven of its top eight QBs from a year ago, including Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and the conference’s all-time leading passer in Aaron Murray.

Combine that with a number of dominating defenses (six in top 18 of total defense) and you have a recipe for average quarterback play. Strong defenses will always be the calling card of the SEC, but no elite quarterbacks will likely create a lot of parity in the league, which is what we saw in 2014.

This season was far from the days of Tim Tebow, Cam Newton, Aaron Murray, Matthew Stafford and others, but many of the current starting quarterbacks have multiple years left in college, so it’s a problem that might not plague the conference for too much longer.

Until top QBs reign again in the SEC, however, the conference will have less elite teams.

NFL sweeps up talent

Often utilized as a testament to the conference’s superiority in college football, the SEC consistently earns the distinction of the most draft picks from a single conference.

Take the 2014 NFL Draft for example — the SEC had 49 selections in that draft, the most of any conference. 2013’s draft was an even great accomplishment with 63 SEC players taken. The next closest that year was the ACC with 30 players.

The SEC has led conferences in NFL draft selections for eight seasons in a row and has combined for a total of 241 picks, compared to just 169 selections for the ACC during that span.

And while those numbers certainly favor the SEC and help further prove the conference’s reign in college football from 2006-13 was no joke, at some point, losing all of that talent will catch up to the conference.

That isn’t to make an excuse for the SEC. All conferences go through the same pains of having to replace superstars after losing them to the NFL. But at some point the losses will catch up with a conference and losing so much talent from the SEC translates to a lot of the conference’s teams having to rebuild.

Looking ahead

The bowl season didn’t work out for the SEC. While the much-maligned SEC East finished with a sterling 5-0 record, the SEC West completed its bowl games with just a 2-5 record and both wins coming from Arkansas and Texas A&M — the two lowest-ranked teams in the division.

However, these last few weeks of bowl games hardly takes away from the SEC’s dominant run in college football. This year’s SEC didn’t feature any elite teams like in the past, but four out of six CFP teams at one point in the season is quite the accomplishment.

And looking ahead, if anything, the SEC has an even better chance to regain its place atop college football in 2015.

Two of the SEC East’s most prestigious programs could be much better next season.  Tennessee seems to be making big strides under Butch Jones and the Vols are primed for a big run next season. Florida cut ties with Will Muschamp and one has to believe that Jim McElwain will be able to extract more talent out of the Gators’ offense than what we’ve seen in the past.

There are also plenty of young players on the verge of becoming football superstars, especially guys like Nick Chubb and Leonard Fournette, Myles Garrett and others.

As I mentioned prior, several of the conference’s starting quarterbacks from 2014 — eight of them, in fact — all have eligibility remaining. And out of that group, only Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott will be a senior.

And plenty of future starts are on their way to SEC as well.

Once again, Alabama is on its way to claiming the nation’s top recruiting class in what would be the fifth-straight year for the Tide to claim that distinction, according to 247sports.com. The SEC as whole is bringing in a number of impressive 2015 recruits with 10 schools in the top 23.

So while 2014 may not have featured many elite schools and the bowl season wasn’t the conference’s finest moment, there’s plenty to suggest that the SEC will remain college football’s best conference in the years ahead.