Dyer, Tigers reaffirm SEC's stranglehold – Yahoo! Sports
It was somewhat of a surprise when Michael Dyer, the best running back in Arkansas, if not all of America, decided to play football at Auburn. He could’ve gone anywhere. He could’ve played for anyone. He chose an 8-5 team with a still unproven head coach.
And he did it because he expected them to win a BCS title. Like soon.
“Auburn is on the rise,” Dyer told ESPN in December of 2009. “We want it to be that team that everybody talks about like Florida or LSU. Auburn is going to be that one day. Once we all get there and get on the same page, we are going to make history.”
Michael Dyer saw big things ahead for Auburn when he was being recruited.(Mark J. Rebilas/US Presswire)
Few others saw the potential for immediate greatness that Dyer did, but Monday night the now-freshman ran for 143 yards, including 57 on the final, dramatic drive that led Auburn to a 22-19 victory over Oregon in the BCS title game.
Dyer and his Auburn family made the history he predicted and whatever doubts people had when the Little Rock native committed proved naïve.
After all, Auburn is in the Southeastern Conference, where half the league (at least) is seemingly one great recruiting class away from being a national contender.
This was the SEC’s fifth consecutive BCS title and seventh overall. Auburn became the fifth different league school to win it all – LSU and Florida have each won twice, Alabama and Tennessee once – and it maintained the conference’s unbeaten streak in title games.
The question now is when it will ever end.
When, exactly, might there be a BCS trophy presentation without the serenade of “SEC! SEC!” ringing throughout the stadium?
“The SEC has demonstrated that they’re a step ahead of everybody else,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany acknowledged to the Chicago Tribune last week, a painful admission for a competitive man.
What else could he say? What else can anyone? The SEC doesn’t just have better teams than the rest of the country, it has more of them. It has the richest and best television deal – a combined $3 billion in national exposure with CBS and ESPN. It has the most passionate fans. Its coaches and players are the game’s biggest stars.
It’s become the NFL-lite – a long way from the sleepy days as a mere Southern pursuit.
“The conference has evolved over the last decade from a regional conference to a national conference,” commissioner Mike Slive said. “At this point it’s fair to say we’re the most widely distributed conference in the country.”
And so the players have followed. Local stars, such as Dyer, hardly consider leaving. The best players from across the country cast an eye toward Dixie.
Auburn’s Michael Dyer rolls over Oregon’s Eddie Pleasant as he carries the ball on a 37 yard gain during the second half.(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Nine of the league’s 12 teams are currently ranked in the top 25 recruiting classes according to Rivals.com (signing day is next month), so the rich is getting richer.
In most BCS conferences there are only two or three schools, at best, that are seriously competing to win a national title. In the SEC, half the league – Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, LSU and Tennessee – all believe they can win it all. And they spend accordingly.
So when Chizik took over a fractured program, he didn’t talk about long-term rebuilding plans or pleading patience with fans.
He told his staff to hit the road and find the best players in America. Sell them on the prettiest little town on the plains. Sell them on raucous Jordan-Hare Stadium. Sell them on offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn’s offense.
Just get them in the fold.
“When I said a year ago we were going to roll up our sleeves and were going to recruit the best players in the country, it was not lip service,” Chizik told me last year. “We went after the best players in the country, East Coast to West, who we thought fit in at Auburn. We’re very proud to be representing Auburn and very confident we can battle anyone for players.
“Our kids are extremely happy. We’re selling the fact of how our kids are treated. We want recruits to feel what it’d be like to be part of the Auburn family. We really feel once we get [a recruit] on campus, then the tradition and passion of Auburn sells itself.”
Dyer, Newton and the rest believed. Auburn signed the No. 4 recruiting class in the country last February and wound up with the No. 1 team this January.
It was that quick. It was that impressive. And in a year where no other SEC team looked like a national contender – when the streak could’ve been in jeopardy – Auburn came out of nowhere to carry the league flag.
Monday night they waved it back and forth in the Arizona desert.
It was another title for the SEC. It was another season of wondering when the run ends for the rest of the country.