re: Over at ESPN, more talk of Auburn moving to East div., so.......

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When discussing relative strength the first thing everyone looks at is who won the conference. That's the gap, and that gap has been personified by Bama being better than everyone and UT falling off the map.

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Fine then. Use those goal posts then:

SEC Championships:

2015: Alabama
2014: Alabama
2013: Auburn
2012: Alabama
2011: LSU
2010: Auburn
2009: Alabama
2008: Florida
2007: LSU
2006: Florida
2005: Georgia
2004: Auburn
2003: LSU
2002: Georgia
2001: LSU

Sine 2001, the East has won 4 SEC Championships, while the West has won 11. If that doesn't define the imbalance, I don't know what will.

It's not all because of Bama either. Of those 11 Titles for the West, Alabama has 4... LSU also has 4... and Auburn has 3. I'd say that splits pretty evenly. The three programs with the most SEC Championships during the past 15 years are all in the West. That's a problem.

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There was a time when the East dominated.

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Not really. Yes, the East was top-heavy at one point, but Kentucky, Vandy, and South Carolina were still stinking it up back then, maybe even more so.

The difference with the West domination now and the East "domination" as far as conference championships were concerned from 1993-2000 was that when the East was winning titles, the West was still winning a lot of head-to-head games against the East. Back then, it was really a 3:6:3 league. The East arguably had the 3 best programs.... but they also had the 3 worst.

That's not the case now with the West. The West is not only stronger at the top, but its even stronger at the bottom (Compared Arky & MSU with UK & Vandy).

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Bama will take a downturn eventually and the East will go on another run eventually.

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Maybe so. But when Bama takes this downturn, will LSU, Auburn, Ole Miss, etc. all take a downturn at the same time? People say these things are cyclical.... but we're now 15 years into this cycle, and the western dominance is continuing to get stronger each year. Eventually folks have got to realize that things have changed. Sure, MSU may have been equivalent to Kentucky and Vandy 20 years ago, but that's not the case now. And it likely won't be the case going forward.

The East was unrealistically propped up by Florida's dominance of the 1990s. They won 5 SEC Titles in just 8 seasons. While Florida will always be good, that is unlikely to ever happen again. And while UT will certainly improve, no one wants to talk about how their program has been on a slow decline for more than 50 years now..... were the late '90s really the "classic UT" or was that a one time deal? Tennessee has 12 Top 10 finishes since 1968... half of those occurred between 1995 and 2001. Obviously the UT of the late 1990s and early 2000s was far stronger than their norm the last generation. The Vols will come back to being relevant, but they may never have another period like that ever again.