Football Outsiders – One Foot Inbounds: The King is Dead?

One Foot Inbounds: The King Is Dead?

>After six consecutive seasons defined by an SEC team hoisting the crystal ball in the BCS Championship Game – and six consecutive offseasons of being constantly reminded of it – the rest of the country has A&M to thank for finally slaying the beast. In their first season in the league, the Aggies are like foreign bodies that have begun cannibalizing the host.

With three weeks to go in the regular season, nothing is certain. But for the three undefeated outfits now occupying the top three spots in the BCS and the other relevant polls – Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame – there is a golden opportunity that has rarely existed over the course of the SEC's reign. Since the start of the 2007 season, there have been 45 editions of the BCS standings. Of that number, the most recent edition is only the sixth in five-and-a-half years that does not include an SEC team ranked No. 1 or No. 2. It's the first to exclude an SEC team from the top two spots since the initial set of rankings in 2010, a run of 19 consecutive weeks; prior to that, the streak stood at 17 consecutive weeks since the final edition of 2007. Since the start of the 2009 season, SEC teams have occupied the first and second slots 14 times. At one point last November, the top three spots were occupied by the SEC West alone.

Read the whole thing.