There was a time in the long and storied history of SEC Football Media Days, which began at the dawn of Bo Jackson’s senior year, when you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a national championship coach. Back in the summer of 2008, five of them roamed the halls at the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover.

LSU’s Les Miles was the reigning champ. Florida’s Urban Meyer was about to embark on a second championship season in three years. South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier carried that distinction from 1996 at Florida.

Alabama’s Nick Saban, who had yet to grab the big ring at Alabama, belonged to the club thanks to his 2003 LSU team. Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer, the boss of the title-winning Vols a decade earlier, didn’t know it at the time, but 2008 would be his last appearance as a head coach at Media Days, in person or by speaker phone.

Imagine. The SEC had only 12 football programs at the time, but five of them were coached by a man who’d taken a team from base camp to summit.

It wasn’t all that lonely at the top then. It is now. Your search for reasons behind the conference’s two-year national championship drought starts there.

At SEC Media Days 2025, a four-day, made-for-TV extravaganza that starts today in Atlanta, you will not run across a currently employed national championship head coach. Nor will you bump into a current coach who’s led his team to victory in the SEC Championship Game. That is, unless you show up Tuesday to see Georgia coach Kirby Smart.

In each case, it’s Smart, party of one. Entering his 10th season in Athens, Smart is the only SEC coach with a natty. He has two. He’s the only SEC coach with an SEC title. He has three. Along with Dabo Swinney and Ryan Day, Smart is one of only three coaches in the country at the moment with a national title.

To make the point even more pointed, only two of the SEC’s other 15 head coaches have ever led a team to the SEC Championship Game. Brian Kelly and LSU lost to Smart and Georgia in 2022. Steve Sarkisian and Texas lost to Smart and Georgia last year.

Mark Stoops and Hugh Freeze top the list of coaches with the longest service in the conference without working a sideline in Atlanta on the first Saturday in December. Stoops stands at the dawn of Year 13 at Kentucky. Freeze is set to begin his eighth season as an SEC head coach, his third at Auburn after an earlier five-year run at Ole Miss.

It might be a sign of the apocalypse upon us if either coach reaches this season’s SEC Championship Game.

While Smart is a competitor in search of a peer within the conference at the moment, he still has some distance to travel to reach the level of his elite predecessors. He’s third in all-time SEC Championship Game appearances with seven and victories with three, but that translates to a 3-4 record. While one more trip will equal Spurrier’s eight appearances, Smart needs two more wins to match Spurrier’s five.

Saban’s 11-1 record in the SEC Championship Game – highlighted by his 9-1 mark at Alabama – seems a bridge too far for Smart or anyone else to cross between now and Armageddon. But what’s happening now? Is anyone out there man enough to slow down Smart’s pursuit of more banners? Kelly? Sarkisian? Anyone?

Put Sarkisian on the short list of real contenders. In Texas’ first season in the conference, he drove the Longhorns to the SEC Championship Game, where they pushed Georgia to overtime before falling 22-19. Texas also has reached the playoffs the last two years.

The other best bet is Kalen DeBoer. His first season at Alabama earned mixed reviews, but he has two data points in his favor. He took Washington to the national championship game two years ago, and he’s undefeated against Smart and Sarkisian. The bad news: DeBoer is under water against Clark Lea and Brent Venables.

After Alabama’s thrilling 41-34 win over Georgia last season, the pressure will be on Smart and the Bulldogs when the Crimson Tide rolls into Sanford Stadium on Sept. 27. It took Saban two years to get Alabama to the SEC Championship Game. DeBoer can do the same under more difficult circumstances since the game now pits the league’s top two teams rather than division winners.

Smart is clearly the SEC’s top dog, but the contenders to be the league’s best coach aren’t what they used to be. If not Sarkisian or DeBoer, who? If not now, when? It’s a talking point as the Super Bowl of talking season kicks off.