I'm gonna get bashed for this but....

The obvious answer is the over saturation of ESPN's love affair with all things Bama.

This started with LSU, specifically, in 2011 with the "rematch", which got the ball rolling on overt bias for one school over all the others in the conference.

Couple this with bridge scheduling that a Bama alum used to tilt their favor for several years, blatantly slanted officiating run by a Bama alum, ESPN and their Bama alum literally cheering every 5 star recruit to go to one school, and voila....

Every time a kid decommits from an SEC school and favors Bama, ESPN immediately puts it on their crawl and gives the 17yo all the air time they want, as well as a "bump" in their ratings.

This is the culmination of years of this. Some of the best players in the league are sitting on Bama's bench.

Now you have teams firing winning coaches and scratching for what talent is left, while the talent gap between Bama's squad (Number One Class) and whoever the Number Two Class is, is greater than the gap between the rating of the two class and 23 or 24 (Rick Daddy could confirm the exact number).

This was all done by design. Yet another great product ruined by the very media (ESPN) that purchased it (SEC), similar to what they did with Texas, the Big 12, and Longhorn Network.

Just think if ESPN would have gotten their way and had a roll tide network. Think its bad now?