The SEC has a well revered reputation as being the best college football conference in all of the land.

They obviously have the hardware, winning seven consecutive national titles from 2006-2013, and we’re one defensive stop away from making it an eighth-straight last January.

This isn’t your slightly older cousin’s Southeastern Conference.

The SEC simply isn’t as dominant as in year’s past, despite what the rankings say, and we’re seeing that play out in the bigger bowl games.

After beginning the bowl season with four consecutive wins (over teams with a combined record of 28-24), the SEC has dropped three consecutive bowl games to five-loss Notre Dame, three-loss Georgia Tech (by 15 points) and Ole Miss was trounced 42-3 by TCU.

“If we have to give the SEC West credit for their great regular season we have to hold them accountable for their bowl season,” former Ohio State wide receiver and ESPN analyst Joey Galloway said.

Ole Miss spent much of the season ranked in the Top 5, and Mississippi State held the No. 1 overall ranking for five weeks and was in the Top 5 for nine weeks. Those two teams in what’s known as the nation’s best conference and the best defensive conference gave up a combined 91 points.

“For a week or so we won’t have to hear about the SEC,” Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson said.

The grasp that the SEC has on the ranking system, which figures into the decisions of the College Football Playoff Committee based on past success needs to go away.

With SEC teams beginning each season ranked highly and playing very few solid non-conference games in the early on, they simply get credit for beating each other without being challenged.

It’s become abundantly clear to anyone without an agenda that the SEC doesn’t have the best quarterbacks or running backs in college football; That honor goes to the Pac-12 and Big Ten respectively, and now their defenses have as many holes in them as everyone else in college football.

During the season, many pundits claimed that the SEC West had three of the best four teams in the country. Right now they are 2-3 in bowl games with the two victories coming from the sixth and seventh-place teams.

It’s entirely possible that Alabama wins two more games in the College Football Playoff and the national title. After all, they are the odds-on favorite to do so.

You have to wonder whether Alabama, of all teams is battle-tested enough entering into this playoff.

After all, the team that beat Alabama, Ole Miss, lost by 39 points on a neutral field in the heart of SEC country to a team from the Big XII.

“TCU is a very good team,” Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze said. “They deserved every mention they got this year to be in the hunt for one of the four. … I’m glad I’m not on that committee to pick the four. They certainly could compete with any of the four in it, there’s no question in my mind.”

The SEC might still be the best conference in football. That doesn’t mean that everyone in the conference is dominant.

All the SEC fans whose teams lost their bowl games and had disappointing seasons can become Alabama fans like they often do during this time of the year.

This message isn’t for them. The convoluted logic of rooting for your arch enemy to achieve great things because it somehow makes you better is beyond me. In fact it hurts you in recruiting.

This message is for the voters in the respective polls. Let’s not begin each season with SEC teams littering the Top 25 without merit. It guarantees that they’ll continue to be on top regardless of the results when they defeat each other.

If you continue to vote that way you’re just feeding into the “SEC Ponzi Scheme.”