re: When did SEC dominance originate?

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When did SEC dominance originate?

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At inception.

Seriously, I did a thread several years ago on this board showing that the SEC beat all other conferences for # of teams finishing a season ranked in the final AP poll for every decade since the start of the 1933 season.

You can argue that the Western Conference (i.e., the "Big Ten") was better team-for-team in the 40's & 50's because they had fewer teams (and the same goes for the Big 8 and SWC for several years during the 70's), but for every single decade the conference with the most AP ranked finishes was the SEC.

The SEC's first era of "glory years" was from around 1957 to 1974, but then integration/demographics/rogue-programs put a damper on SEC dominance for a while, and the 1980s in particular was an era dominated by indies (ND, FSU, Miami, Penn State, WVU, Pitt, Syracuse, etc.).

Nonetheless, the SEC was back on top in the 1990s, and the huge deal to create the Big XII that was supposed to surpass the SEC never went anywhere after Tom Osborne left Nebraska.

All that being said, yeah, the SEC has now entered a whole new era of super-dominance over the last 5 years or so.