I have seen the "SEC is down this year" take everywhere. I am obviously a biased OM fan who never thinks we get any respect, but that did have me wondering. If you swapped Missouri and Ole Miss out of the top 12 with LSU and Florida are people still saying the SEC had a down year?
Or when Neal said "Georgia didn't beat anybody" when saying their "biggest" wins were against Missouri and Ole Miss. Again, if we swap Missouri and Ole Miss seasons with LSU and Florida, I imagine all of the sudden the conversation would become Georgia beat two powerhouse 10-2 teams, because we are used to talking about those teams in that way.
My opinion, the SEC was not down this year, we just weren't expecting historically average/below average teams to be the top of the second tier of the league.