Alabama’s days of ‘running the SEC’ are over. It’s not because of Texas or Oklahoma.

The expanded SEC standings are sad. The same for the Big 10, and Big 12.

They’re 43 miles long, and they would make a geographer ask, “Maybe legalizing drugs was a mistake.”

A Big 10 game between Oregon and Maryland will always be insane. An ACC game between Miami and California is an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Even Allstate would agree a Big 12 game between Arizona and West Virginia is nonsensical.

All of these games will happen this fall.

Our eyes will eventually grow accustomed to seeing this new formation of college sports’ super duper mega power conferences, but it needs to be said again this didn’t need to happen. This is just another example of wealth consolidation, in the same category as Marriott merging with Starwood, or Bank of America acquiring Merrill Lynch.

It’s a little that gross private equity firms are knocking on these conference doors to see if they can “help.”

The irony in all of this monopolozing is that it should end the monopolies in college football.

The idea that Nick Saban retired as the coach of Alabama just because the “kids are different” these days is only partially accurate. He was smart enough to see that his power at the top of the food chain was over.

Alabama can still be Alabama without Saban, but no team will assemble the run of national titles his Tide did when it won six from 2009 to 2020.

SEC Media Days are in Dallas this week, and you might have noticed this non-event event is much quieter than in previous years. This is the first time this has ever been held in Texas, and the distance from the traditional spots all over Southeast prevented a lot of the smaller media outlets, and fans, from making the trek.

If this had been held in Atlanta or Nashville, the temperature around all of this would have been at its normal reading of, “BRAIN DEAD.”

Like most popular coaches who no longer coach and would rather eat fire than spend time around the house, Saban is now an analyst for the SEC Network, which basically means he works for ESPN. He made a few headlines when he said of Texas this week, “They’re not going to run the SEC. There’s a whole lot of arrogant people in a lot of places in the SEC, so they can forget all about that.”

Correct. He also never bothered to check the history of the Big 12 standings. He hasn’t visited with a Sooner about their time in the Big 12. Texas never “ran” the Sooner League. The Sooners won 12 league titles; the next closest was Texas’ seven.

Because UT is coming off its first ever appearance in the playoff, and is now flexing its money like an oligarch, there is some thought that Bevo will buy his way to titles.

“We’ve had a football team that has been obsessed with wanting to get back,” Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian Wednesday to reporters.

Oh, Coach. Don’t say that. The words “Texas” and “back” should be used in the same sentence only with extreme caution. Ask Sam Ehlinger.

Money can buy a lot, but if straight cash could purchase national titles Texas would have 50 in the last 20 years, followed closely by Notre Dame’s 45. Even Texas A&M might be able to win one.

The new conference alignments will make it nearly impossible for one team to “run” any of these leagues. The possible exceptions are Florida State or Clemson in the ACC, but those feel like a reach. Combined with increased roster turnover from year to year with schools spending unconscionable amounts of money, imagining just one team piling up national titles is a bigger reach.

The same teams that have been winning national titles will continue to do so, but their individual runs of dominance at No. 1 will be brief. The national champs’ will be the same as every other year; other than zip code, mascot and color scheme, there isn’t that much difference between a Washington than a Georiga. They’re all giant state schools with money.

College football is now a Wal-Mart league, and Wal-Mart is going to win.

Since the SEC started the major conference expansion and realignment game many years ago by adding South Carolina and Arkansas to its league in the summer of 1991, you might want to look at who runs the SEC. It’s never the new kid.

The additions to the original members from that league are there mostly for the check, not to the championships. None of the SEC’s new additions has won a conference title.

Adding Arkansas and a Missouri, or even an A&M, is not like Texas and Oklahoma. These programs have won national titles before. The Sooners and Horns are a different dynamic to college football’s most arrogant group.

And just like with the Big 12, Texas is not about to run the SEC.

Neither is anyone else.