Alabama head coach Nick Saban can claim the title of being one of two coaches to win five national championships in the modern era, but he can also claim a new title: The Godfather of the SEC.
For the last decade, the conference has been dominated by an oligarchy of formidable coaching personalities. Saban, along with Steve Spurrier, Gary Pinkel, Les Miles, Mark Richt and Urban Meyer formed an undisputed hierarchy within the SEC. Their teams have produced 13 of the last 16 representatives in the SEC Championship game.
Saban is the sole survivor of that group.
His domination extends beyond the scoreboard. Saban has not only outlasted his rivals; he has replaced them.
Jim McElwain took over at Florida in 2015, but before leading the Gators to a 10-4 record last season, he served as Saban's offensive coordinator and quarterback coach.
Two more recent coaching hires, South Carolina's Will Muschamp and Georgia's Kirby Smart, were also Saban's understudies.
So instead of an oligarchy, we are now experiencing a state of Cosa Nostra in the SEC. Like a city controlled by the mafioso, all of the league's power is concentrated in a single family, with Muschamp, Smart and McElwain functioning as metaphorical underbosses to Saban. All have gained from their affiliation with the conference's boss.
Is this a good thing?
The success of Saban's model is indisputable; the Crimson Tide are currently riding a 21-game winning streak, but Saban has also created a model for sustainably attracting and developing talent that is unrivaled not only in the conference, but in the country.
But with his blueprint being reproduced so consistently, the league is losing the opportunity for creativity and diversity. Instead of broadening the league's scope of leadership, the Saban pipeline is actually narrowing it.
With three of the top seven teams in the AP Poll, the Big Ten is quickly lapping the SEC as the nation's premier conference. A lot of that can be attributed to the variety of innovative coaching styles displayed in the Big Ten. The competition between Meyer at Ohio State and Jim Harbaugh at Michigan has created an arms race in the conference, and other programs have been forced to adapt in order to compete with them.
The Saban-dominated league hasn't resulted in literal bloodshed, but the streets of SEC have been soaked in crimson.