Big Ten drops the mic on SEC football and Nick Saban

Blake Toppmeyer, USA TODAYThu, July 30, 2026 at 9:10 AM UTC

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Nick Saban spoke, and everyone shook their heads. Or rolled their eyes. Or, they barked in laughter.

And, let’s just say we weren’t laughing with Saban when he recently made the case the SEC retains conference supremacy despite not sending a team to the national championship game in any of the past three seasons.

“First of all, whoever wins the national championship doesn’t define who has the best conference,” Saban said on ESPN. “I think the best conference gets defined by how many good teams you have from top to bottom.”

The GOAT retired and became a shill. Sad.

Speaking of the bottom, did anyone get a look at Arkansas last season? Not pretty.

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Anyway, we’re supposed to believe the coach who became obsessed with pursuing and maintaining greatness while winning seven national championships now believes superiority is defined not by trophies but by your number of 8-4 teams?

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Neither does anyone else.

That’s the thing about propaganda: To be effective, it must be believable.

An X account affiliated with ESPN, the SEC’s usual propagandist-in-chief, tweeted the clip of Saban’s hot air alongside an emoji of the dubious thinking face.

Might as well have added the Ron Burgundy GIF: I don’t believe you!

The Big Ten isn’t just winning championships. It’s winning at the microphone.

Illinois coach Bret Bielema got fired from the only SEC job he ever had, but he embodies the Big Ten’s spirit of looking forward — or, at least, relishing the moment — rather than gazing longingly into the rearview mirror. Bielema delivered one of the great lines of talkin’ season when he said at Big Ten media days the SEC wants “to live in 2005 forever.”

SEC lives in past, pretends present isn't real

Bielema got the year wrong — the SEC’s reign spanned from 2006-22 — but the sentiment rang true. The SEC lives in the past. Instead of acknowledging the Big Ten’s takeover and letting it serve as motivation, the SEC’s commissioner, coaches and spin-doctor Saban pretend it’s not happening.

Here’s what is happening: College football now orbits around the playoff, and SEC teams are 0-4 against the Big Ten in playoff games since Georgia beat Ohio State on New Year’s Eve to wrap up 2022.

Greg Sankey typically aces the rhetoric circuit, but he sounded warped and broken when he insisted two months ago he’s still in charge of the best football conference, “by far.” As proof, he cited metrics he’s reviewed privately.

No word yet on whether Sankey believes in Bigfoot, too.

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Sankey’s Big Ten peer, Tony Petitti, normally opts for a more muted tone in the pulpit battles, but he found his voice at media days.

He cited the Big Ten’s 11 playoff victories the past two seasons, which is “more than double the next-closest league,” and he responded to the SEC’s argument that its mid-tier is better than the Big Ten’s.

"This idea that the middle of our conference isn't hard is just not right,” Petitti said.

If he’d wanted to hang on the rim, he could’ve mentioned the results of the Music City or ReliaQuest bowls, but Petitti let that slide.

Big Ten now home to 'good quarterback play'

As to how the Big Ten claimed the pole position, Bielema offered the obvious explanation.

“When (transfer portal and NIL) came into college football, the whole world changed,” Bielema said.

In other words, good players will happily play in the conference up north if you pay them. The power evolution goes deeper than booster bucks, though. It’s also about the Big Ten turning quarterback play into a feature instead of a bug.

Nobody tossed it better last season than Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, but Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Oregon’s Dante Moore ranked among the nation’s best quarterbacks, too.

Iowa never would be credibly accused of setting the standard for quarterback play, but Mark Gronowski didn’t look out of place going up against Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia, the Heisman runner-up, in the Hawkeyes’ bowl win last December.

“Good quarterback play, as we see, matters a lot in winning,” Southern Cal coach Lincoln Riley said. “And there's a lot of really good ones in this league right now."

Riley’s own good quarterback, Jaiden Maiava, gives USC a shot at qualifying for the playoff for the first time.

In response to Saban bloviating that the SEC asserts its superiority in the middle and bottom levels of the league, Bielema tweeted two scores.

Illinois 21, South Carolina 17, 2024.

Illinois 30, Tennessee 28, 2025.

Winning remains the best mic drop.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Big Ten drops the mic on SEC football and Nick Saban

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