Alabama
What are the best SEC college football programs? Start with Alabama, Oklahoma
In certain outposts throughout the South, it’s pronounced “progrum,” not program.
However you say it, the SEC footprint houses some of the most celebrated and iconic college football programs in all the land, complete with rabid fanbases that breathe college football all year. Games are played in towering cathedrals where the crowds partake in what’s almost a religious experience on fall Saturdays.
When evaluating the SEC’s programs, recent results should be considered, but rankings also should reflect historical success, traditions, blue-blood status and fan support.
Here’s how I rank the SEC’s programs, top to bottom:
Alabama football is more than a program, and it’s bigger than an international brand. It’s a way of life. The Script A represents tradition and excellence. Alabama fans are plugged in year-round to their favorite sport, and expectations rarely dip. Coaches who thrive in T-Town are immortalized in bronze. The GOAT conversation runs through Alabama. Is it Nick Saban or Bear Bryant? Either way, it’s an Alabama coach.
2. Oklahoma
The crimson and cream have blue blood. Among SEC schools, Oklahoma trails only Alabama for all-time winning percentage. Double-digit win seasons remain the standard, although the 2000 Sooners remain OU’s last national champion. Oklahoma ruled the 1950s under Bud Wilkinson, then ran back their dominance with Barry Switzer’s wishbone in the 1970s and 80s. Seven Heisman winners point to the program’s star power.
3. Texas
Texas’ deep war chest suits the NIL era, but don’t mistake the Longhorns for the nouveau riche. They’re a traditional power that emerged from an inexcusable, prolonged slumber in between Mack Brown and Steve Sarkisian. Texas enjoyed its heyday in the Southwest Conference under Darrell Royal, but the Longhorns also showed their horns during the Brown era. They belong among the heavy hitters.
The Bulldogs don’t crack the list of blue bloods, but Kirby Smart made them look like one. Georgia has seized a place of persistent power that was long considered possible, because of the school’s location within fertile recruiting terrain. Smart flawlessly implemented Saban’s recruit-and-develop blueprint. We’re witnessing Georgia’s glory days, decades after Herschel Walker and Vince Dooley supplied the previous peak in the early 1980s.
5. LSU
LSU is the only program to have three coaches win a national championship in this millennium. Lane Kiffin could become the fourth. Money poured in to fund his roster. LSU’s standards are such that Brian Kelly got fired after winning 71% of his games. In-state talent gravitates to LSU, but the Tigers also built a national brand, and a night game at Tiger Stadium is a college football mecca.
6. Tennessee
Few states can match Tennessee’s unrelenting vigor for college football. Gen. Robert Neyland put the Vols on the map and got his name on the stadium. Johnny Majors earned a place of adoration. Phillip Fulmer’s Vols flourished in the 1990s. Since Fulmer, Tennessee’s ravenous fans infrequently had a chance to say, “It feels like ’98.” For too long, it felt more like dysfunction, but Tennessee recaptured respectability under Josh Heupel.
Few individuals mean more to a program than what Steve Spurrier means to Florida. He revolutionized the Gators from an also-ran into one of the premier programs of the 1990s. The Head Ball Coach branded The Swamp and gave the Gators an identity. They became SEC championship game regulars. Urban Meyer injected more glory with two titles. Florida lacks the consistency and history of some higher-ranked programs, but its peaks are just as lofty.
These are dark days for Auburn. The Tigers endured five consecutive losing seasons, their bleakest period since the late 1940s. Auburn’s loyal fan base deserves better. Recent woes aside, this accomplished program achieved undefeated seasons under three coaches since the 1990s. From Pat Sullivan to Bo Jackson to Cam Newton, Auburn produced decorated stars. Now, it just needs to pull out of this funk.
Trivia question: When did Texas A&M last win a national championship? Answer: 1939. The Aggies possess the financial resources, fan support and recruiting location to be top shelf, but greatness stubbornly eludes them. R.C. Slocum’s Aggies ruled the Southwest Conference in the early 1990s. Is it time for a fresh set of glory days? Mike Elko’s early returns suggest it’s safe for the Aggies to dream of ascending to their potential.
10. Mississippi
Those old enough to witness Johnny Vaught remember Ole Miss as a powerhouse. Those who watched Archie Manning remember the Rebels with a superstar. Then, Kiffin and Trinidad Chambliss made it so everyone can remember Ole Miss as a playoff team with a premier quarterback. Kiffin treated the Rebels like they were small by leaving for LSU, but not before spawning an uprising that showed the school’s potential in the NIL era.
Arkansas piled up Southwest Conference hardware under Frank Broyles, along with an undefeated season. The conference crowns ceased after Arkansas left in 1991 for the SEC, where there’s been more famine than feast for the Hogs. Even in the SEC, the Razorbacks enjoyed a few highlight seasons, but those uprisings are fading into the rearview mirror. The Hogs need another Darren McFadden.
The Tigers tout seven seasons of double-digit-wins in the past 20 years. They transitioned to the SEC better than many expected. Gary Pinkel became the best thing to happen to Mizzou since Dan Devine. Eliah Drinkwitz has been a gift, too. Anyone who’s a millennial or older can remember the program’s highlight moments, even if they never resulted in a Big 12 or SEC title.
13. Mississippi State
Dan Mullen and Mike Leach did it well for Mississippi State, but Starkville remains one of the toughest SEC outposts to win big or to sustain success. Jackie Sherrill’s 74 wins are the most for any Mississippi State coach. He needed 13 seasons to reach that number. You can’t take the cowbells away from Mississippi State, nor its 15-12 record in bowl games.
14. South Carolina
Spurrier’s successful 11-year run at South Carolina ranks among the best program-building feats in modern history. He won 11 games three seasons in a row, and his teams finished ranked in the top 10 each year. The Gamecocks never won 11 games before Spurrier, and they’ve never hit double digits since he left. Aside from Spurrier’s tenure, the peaks are few and far between.
A program that employed Bear Bryant (and finished 11-1 under the Bear in 1950) can’t rank last on this list, so here we arrive at Kentucky. What can we say about the Wildcats? Well, they own a winning record against Vanderbilt, and they occasionally aren’t as bad as you’d expect a basketball school to be. Mark Stoops got them to a respectable level, but was unable to keep things afloat.
16. Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt’s 10 wins last year register as its single-season record, so you could say the program’s never looked better. The less said, the better, about much of Vanderbilt’s history — unless you want to discuss the 1904 season. That year, Vanderbilt went 9-0 and outscored its competition 474-4. Glory days.
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.
Kalen DeBoer doesn’t have an easy choice to make this fall as he decides between Austin Mack and Keelon Russell to take the reins at quarterback for Alabama.
Mack has a significant edge in experience, heading into his fourth season in DeBoer’s offensive system. Russell is entering year two, but he’s an unbelievable talent. That was on full display during garbage time last year, and again during the A-Day scrimmage in the spring.
There is confidence among the players and coaching staff that whoever wins the job will be able to provide high-level play at the position. Marshall Pritchett probably put it best at fan and media day on Saturday.
While he had praise for both quarterbacks, it was his comments on Russell that make it hard to envision the star sophomore not being the starter.
On Mack, Pritchett said, via AL.com’s Nick Kelly:
“Austin’s an incredibly knowledgeable quarterback … He’s a true prototype NFL quarterback. He’s a huge kid. … He’s very straightforward. You get the call, you line up, and Austin is going to deliver. He is a very smart quarterback. Very dependable.”
On Russell, Pritchett called him “dynamite in a bottle” (also via Nick Kelly):
“The guy’s an incredible athlete. Incredible football thrower. It’s so hard to explain his game if you haven’t kind of seen it fully in person every day like we do. He just makes throws, and it’s like, you rewind the film, you’re like, there’s no way he just did that. How did he just do that? That’s the only way to explain Keelon. The guy’s dynamite.”
Alabama needs Keelon Russell’s upside to reach its ceiling in 2026
Mack is a good player. Alabama can win games with Mack this season. But Russell is a special talent. There may be some growing pains with him, but for an Alabama offense that has some legitimate question marks, the upside that comes with the former 5-star recruit might be difficult for DeBoer to ignore.
The best version of Alabama in 2026 is with Russell at QB. He’s the dynamic, ceiling-raiser quarterback who can put the Crimson Tide’s offense on his back and make it a truly elite unit.
It’s impossible to ignore the statements Pritchett made. He described it as “hard to explain,” and called him “dynamite in a bottle.”
Another recent comment from Ryan Grubb stood out. When asked what the quarterbacks had improved upon most since the spring, Grubb said the following about Russell:
“The summer, I’d say Keelon did a better job taking care of the football in the summer than he did the spring.”
That’s the biggest question mark with a young quarterback. Can he avoid the back-breaking plays? We know that Russell will make plenty of eye-popping plays, the ones like Pritchett described. But what isn’t known about Russell is how he’ll respond when he makes a bad play. How does he respond when he gets hit? Those are all questions that aren’t answerable until he’s been exposed to them in a real game setting.
But it’s a worthwhile gamble. Alabama may have a higher floor with Mack, but there’s little question that the ceiling is higher with Russell leading the way. He’s a dynamic dual-threat QB who could be the cure to the Tide’s biggest offensive ailment from a season ago: the inability to run the football.
DeBoer and Grubb aren’t in a particular hurry to name a starter. They’d like to do it before the first game. Alabama has scrimmages on the 13th and 20th this month that will go a long way in determining the outcome of the competition.
But the closer we get to the season and the more intel that gets released, the more difficult it is to ignore the significant upside that Russell would bring to the Tide’s offense.
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — In the blazing summer heat, a small portion of the Thomas-Drew Practice Fields has become Alabama football’s own version of the valley of the shadow of death.
This hellacious nightmare on grass is where the Crimson Tide players were tested and taken far beyond their physical and mental limits on a daily basis during summer workouts. It’s a place no one looked forward to visiting, but it wasn’t optional.
This is Practice Field 3.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Crimson Tide offensive lineman Michael Carroll told BamaCentral at Alabama Media Day on Saturday.
“It was… yeah…You don’t want to talk about Field 3,” cornerback Dijon Lee Jr. said.
“You know you’re about to be put through the wringer, you know you’re about to have a tough day,” left tackle Jackson Lloyd said.
Practice Field 3 is not a reward nor a punishment — even though it feels like one. Players aren’t sent there to do things on their own. Instead, the whole team does the rigorous job. Alabama strength coach Dave Ballou is the CEO of the field, and just describing what goes on there is a tough task.
“Man, man, man, you’ve just got to be there,” Alabama wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams said while smiling. “I ain’t gonna lie, Practice Field 3, that’s a different warrior. During the offseason, you definitely don’t want nothing to do with it. During the season, you still don’t want nothing to do with it.”
A lot of players had similar reactions when we asked about Practice Field 3, as their eyes widened with a vision of what goes down on that piece of land with nervous laughter mixed in. But wide receiver Rico Scott rolled his eyes, chuckled and took a deep breath.
“Pain,” Scott said. “When DeBoer tells us to go to Field 3, it’s like a ‘here we go again’ kind of thing. Really that’s because of Ballou, because most of the time when you think about Field 3 you think about summer workouts that Ballou’s putting us through.”
But Practice Field 3 itself isn’t the villain. That’s what the Ring of Fire located on it is for. Alabama running back Daniel Hill explained that there are drill stations in the ring, and it’s a constant loop while rotating like a square. Lloyd said it’s a “bunch of movement prep stuff, a bunch of running,” but no one dared to go into the specifics.
Water breaks don’t seem to be an option as it’s non-stop moving for 45 minutes straight. So, what’s Hill’s favorite part of it?
“It’s fun…after you get done, yes,” Hill said. “After you get done, then it’s fun.”
Not even SEC Media Days in Tampa last month could save player representatives, Coleman-Williams, safety Bray Hubbard and cornerback Zabien Brown from the Ring of Fire, as they had to compete when they returned.
Hubbard said that there isn’t necessarily a set time in what he described as the “brutal” Ring of Fire. There were times when Ballou conducted it for over 90 minutes during the summer, and it “depends how long coach Ballou likes to make it.” The Preseason First Team All-SEC member detailed that the Ring of Fire is 30-by-30 yards, as there’s a lot of ground to cover.
“It’s like a gauntlet,” Hubbard said while laughing. “When you go out to Field 3, it’s time to work. You get pushed to your limit — what does it take to break you? But we all need it, and it’s a part of [Alabama football].”
Oftentimes, we survive because the fire inside of us burns brighter than the fire around us, and this became the case for Alabama players competing on Practice Field 3.
“I’ve been saying it to everyone — it’s a mental game,” safety Ivan Taylor said. “It really does change your mentality. Coach Ballou, man, he’s crazy, so all of us try to have his mentality. We’re trying to be like him when it comes down to just being crazy.”
Alabama safety Keon Sabb, one of the most experienced players on the roster, is well aware of Practice Field 3 and the Ring of Fire. But his multi-year leadership has helped him share a similar perspective to Taylor.
“It’s a legendary field where you learn and understand how to deal with pain,” Sabb said while smiling. “You truly start to understand what mindset you need to have in football. Field 3, you go out there and know what to expect, the way you go there and down that field, it’s about attacking it. You can’t run from the work, it’s not going to go anywhere. You’ve just got to put your head down and run through it.”
Alabama is in an unfamiliar spot entering the 2026 season, as it was picked 11th in the Preseason Coaches Poll, its lowest placement since 2008, and fifth in the SEC’s initial ranking. On Aug. 5, DeBoer was asked during the press conference if his players are paying attention to the doubts from outside the program.
DeBoer’s answer: “Yeah, we are definitely aware.”
Alabama has plenty of bulletin board material heading into the 2026 season. Practice Field 3 and the Ring of Fire are only making the Crimson Tide hungrier. Sabb said his favorite part of it is seeing how his teammates respond and react to the workout. Seeing players get to a point where they might fall over or pass out, but they just keep on going. They know the national expectations surrounding the Crimson Tide.
Taylor, the son of former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback and two-time Super Bowl champion Ike Taylor, described it as “horrible,” but also admitted that it can be fun, as he holds a similar perspective to his fellow safety.
“You get to compete against your brothers,” Taylor said. “I think that’s the biggest thing for me — it’s just competing. I know that’s why a lot of people come to Alabama is to compete against the best and try to get the best out of yourself.”
Alabama Wolf linebacker Yhonzae Pierre shared that the Ring of Fire is far from the only thing the Tide did during a typical summer practice. The weight room, indoor field, sleds, squats and gassers all came before spending time on Practice Field 3.
Pierre, Alabama’s sacks and tackles for loss leader in 2025, isn’t in love with an “hour of straight running,” but he also understands why Ballou and DeBoer put the Tide through the Ring of Fire.
“Can’t let it kill you, you got to beat it, it’s definitely work,” Pierre said while shaking his head. “We’re pushing all of each other and not letting the workout kill us. We’ve got to beat the workout.”
So, what happens when you come out of Practice Field 3? Is there a long-term positive to the Ring of Fire?
“Oh, like definitely,” Carroll said. “It’s going to pay off, because now I feel like I’m in better shape and more prepared than anyone in the nation. I can’t wait to put that on display.”
Alabama has been labeled as a soft team all offseason. If Practice Field 3 and the Ring of Fire serve their purposes — as they should — the Crimson Tide can have an edge over the conference and change its imposed narrative very quickly this fall.
After all, Sabb had the option to declare for the NFL Draft, but made the surprising move to return for his fifth year of college football. Why?
“Win a National Championship,” Sabb said in the spring. “I won one already [at Michigan in 2023]. I’m trying to win my second now. We’ve got the talent and stuff to do it, so I’m looking forward to it.”
After a grueling but very productive summer, the Ring of Fire is over. But this 30-by-30-yard patch of grass was just the warmup.
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Alabama had 23 total rushing yards in the season-ending, 38-3 loss to Indiana in the College Football Playoff Rose Bowl quarterfinal. Running backs Daniel Hill and Kevin Riley combined for eight rushes for 15 yards.
That game, and Alabama’s rushing attack, has been on Hill’s mind ever since.
“That’s something that since the last time we played football, since we played Indiana, that’s been a big thing that I really think about,” Hill said during Alabama’s fall media day on Saturday. “You don’t always want to hear how your group is doing and things like that. I think about it every day. And it’s not just me, it’s the whole room. We all think about how everybody’s talking about we can’t run the ball and this and that, and that’s why we have our head down just working.”
The performance in the Rose Bowl capped off a disappointing season rushing the ball for the Crimson Tide. Alabama finished 125th in FBS last season in rushing with an average of 104 yards per game. Starting with the LSU game at the beginning of November, Alabama averaged 54.7 rushing yards per game over the final six games against FBS opponents.
Improving the run game has been a major point of focus for the Tide offense the entire offseason. The struggles don’t fall solely on the shoulders of the running backs but also on the offensive line and tight ends for run blocking.
Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb spoke earlier in the week about what the offense needs to do to run the ball better.
“Simplify and do your best stuff,” Grubb said. “Don’t get an inch deep and a mile wide. Do what you’re good at and be great at it. And Coach [Adrian] Klemm has done an excellent job with helping build that. And between him and Rich Owens, I’m super excited to work with those two guys in resurrecting the run game, and we will.”
Hill is now the veteran in the room ahead of junior Kevin Riley, sophomore AK Dear and freshmen EJ Crowell and Trae’shawn Brown. Alabama is looking for its first 1000-yard rusher since Brian Robinson Jr. in 2021.
“I know there’s stuff that I need to improve on,” Hill said. “It’s stuff I need to do to help the run game do better, and that’s something I’m going to continue to do.”
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