SEC Football: Why the SEC Needs the East to Be Good Again

It goes without question that the SEC West is the powerhouse of the conference as of now. Scratch that, the powerhouse of college football right now. As owners of five of the eight BCS national championships the SEC has, the West is certainly viewed as an overall better division.

The SEC Championships haven't even been close the last three years. The West outscored the East by a total of 130-40. If that's not dominance, then I don't know what is. The West has just been better, plain and simple. It may be a combination of factors, but it all boils down to what they are doing best right now: winning. 

Excuse me for a second if I sound like anyone's grandfather, but what happened to the good old days of the '90s? From 1992 to 2000, the SEC East collected seven of the SEC Championships with two national championships against extremely tough teams from other conferences (don't even try to argue that the Cornhuskers and Seminoles weren't as good, if not better, than SEC teams).

It may be a cycle or something of that sort, but that's not too good an excuse and doesn't answer all the questions. How could the SEC East have fallen behind so fast? It wasn't recruiting, we know that. Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and even South Carolina have brought in great recruiting classes since 2002. 

Coaching wasn't an issue. Phillip Fulmer, Steve Spurrier, Urban Meyer and Mark Richt are well established and respected coaches, all having led their teams to SEC Championships and even winning a lot of them. 

Some people are probably questioning why this is important at this time. They're wondering what's the big deal if the East isn't good. All it matters is that at least one division is good, right?

Wrong. The huge problem that it faces is that the conference is so ridiculously top heavy that if the West soon declines (which is certainly possible) then the SEC can quickly find itself fighting to just finish in the Top Three rankings. 

Think about what could happen if the East gets back to its winning ways. The SEC could be in the national championship, a BCS bowl and have multiple teams finish in the Top 10. The SEC dynasty would last even longer.

If the East can catch up, the conference would have a better base. Especially with teams like Vanderbilt on the rise. If an SEC team that finished near last could almost beat the co-champion of the Big East, then think about what they could do if they were on top.

I know it's a stupid request, but I want to go back to the days of the No. 1 and No. 2 battles between Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. The offenses of the East were and still are more fun to watch. If you lost to one of them, then your chances at the SEC championship were done.

The East could certainly rise in a year or two, which actually works out pretty well. Tennessee and Florida are still rebuilding, but will certainly improve this year. Georgia and South Carolina are almost there, but still fared poorly against the West.

I'm not sure how it will get done, but it needs to for the betterment of the conference and its fans. If the East can rise again, the SEC will be more dominant and even more interesting.