Alabama Football: SEC a 4-team league with LSU, AU and UT in lower tiers

Alabama Football: 2021 SEC football will be ruled by the Tide, followed by the Aggies, Gators and Georgia. All the other teams will struggle to catch up.

Coming out of the 2020 season, SEC football has five tiers. Alabama Football is at the top, alone in Tier 1. Currently, the SEC has only one elite program and it is the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Tier 2 includes the three teams having the best chance to unseat the Crimson Tide. They are, in no specific order,  Georgia, Texas A&M and Florida.

Tier 3 includes the upward trending Missouri Tigers, the newly mediocre LSU Tigers and the flailing Auburn Tigers. Missouri is rapidly improving. LSU has too much talent to slip below Tier 3 during the 2021 season. The Auburn Tigers could slip into Tier 4 before the end of 2021.

Tier 4 includes five teams. Any of them, or none of them, could leap forward in 2021. The five are the Kentucky Wildcats, the Mississippi State Bulldogs, the Arkansas Razorbacks, the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Ole Miss Whatevers. Six or seven wins will probably be the 2021 ceiling for the Tier 4 teams. Perhaps one of the five might win eight games.

Only two teams populate Tier 5 and their 2021 prospects are grim. Vanderbilt being one of the two is no surprise. The Dores could be better in 2021 and still lose 6-9 games. The Tennessee Vols are in free fall. With an unsettled coaching situation, a big exodus of players and NCAA doom lingering indefinitely, the Vols will do well to win more than cupcake games.

2021 SEC Football Tiers

• Tier 1 – Alabama Crimson Tide
• Tier 2 – Georgia, Texas A&M, Florida
• Tier 3 -(All Tigers)  LSU, Missouri, Auburn
• Tier 4 – Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississipi State, South Carolina and Ole Miss
• Tier 5 – Vanderbilt and Tennessee

It is easy for Crimson Tide fans to believe the program floats above the SEC carnage below it. Many Alabama football fans remember when it didn’t. Not that long ago, the Crimson Tide suffered from self-inflicted wounds. Similar to the failed leadership and outsider (boosters) influence damaging LSU, Auburn and Tennessee now, the Tide suffered for most of the 24, post-Bryant seasons, leading up to Nick Saban.

Ray Perkins was a highly respected NFL Head Coach. His Crimson Tide record was 32-15-1. His fourth Tide team was his best, winning 10 games, but Perkins had enough of others wanting their fingers in the Tide program. He walked away when offered a lucrative return to the NFL. Bill Curry’s three seasons followed and produced a 26-10 record. Curry’s last Tide team won 10 games too and reached No. 2 in the AP Poll during the season. Curry was never embraced by some with influence. Though not fired, he left because negative pressure was unrelenting.

Alabama football fans will forever be indebted to Gene Stallings for stepping in, steadying the ship and winning another National Championship. Stallings stayed with the Crimson Tide only seven seasons, compiling a 70-16-1 record. Like Perkins and Curry before him, Stallings chose to leave because of negative influences. Individuals in athletic and university administration wanted more control; resulting in less for Stallings. Seeing the damage his bosses were willing to cause and unable to stop it, Stallings chose to walk away.

There is more to the Stallings story; assistants positioning themselves to be his successor. One succeeded; Mike Dubose. What followed in the four years of Dubose, two of Dennis Franchione and four of Mike Shula is the Crimson Tide was a shadow of its former self. Dubose did not have the coaching ability, Franchione, was without the championship character, and inheriting an awful mess, Shula, had no real chance to turn the Tide around.

For Alabama football fans it was 10 seasons of agony. Mal Moore, Nick and Terry Saban rescued us. The ten season interval needs to be remembered because the Tide was as dysfunctional as the Vols, LSU and Auburn are now. Too many Alabama football decisions were made by individuals who either had no idea how to build a championship program, did not want one, or only wanted one, to serve themselves.

The Crimson Tide program erred so badly, for so long, it is astounding the Alabama Crimson Tide is now the greatest college football program of all-time.

Alabama fans – celebrate the achievement, enjoy every second of it and remember, as Nick Saban says, there is no continuum of success; only opportunities to keep succeeding or to fail.