Miami's 24-14 upset of Ohio State in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Cotton Bowl was notable at the time, for a few obvious reasons:
-- it was the end of Ohio State's bid to become college football's first repeat champion since 2021-22 Georgia, which would've been doubly special given that both would have happened in the 12-team era
-- it threw open the national title race with the elimination of a co-favorite
-- it was proof-of-concept for Mario Cristobal's ability to return Miami to the national elite
Perhaps the most important implication from that game was not obvious at the time, but has since become crystal clear as the NFL draft process kicks into high gear: it was an historic collection of top-end NFL talent, and not a single SEC logo was anywhere to be found.
The loosening of the SEC's stranglehold on elite NFL draft talent is all but set in stone for the 2026 draft, with most mocks projecting as few as one SEC player among the top 10 and many placing none in the top five. (As recently as 2023, six of the top 10 played in the SEC.) But a CBS Sports mock, released Monday, drives the point home further. With the obvious caveat that this is just one man's opinion and the actual draft is still weeks away, CBS forecasts that an historic seven of the top 13 players in the 2026 NFL Draft were on the AT&T Stadium turf on New Year's Eve. I'm not here to say seven of the top 13 picks on the same field has never happened before, but I am saying I've never found another example of it. (The historic Miami-Ohio State title game at the end of the 2002 season "only" produced four top-13 picks in the next two drafts, all of them Hurricanes.)
OHIO STATE PROJECTED TOP 100 DRAFT PICKS
Arvell Reese, Edge: No. 5 (New York Giants)
Sonny Styles, LB: No. 8 (New Orleans Saints)
Caleb Downs, Safety: No. 9 (Kansas City Chiefs)
Carnell Tate, WR: No. 13 (Los Angeles Rams)
Kayden McDonald, DL: No. 28 (Houston Texans)
Davison Igbinosun, CB: No. 72 (Cincinnati Bengals)
MIAMI PROJECTED TOP 100 DRAFT PICKS
Francis Mauigoa, OT: No. 3 (Arizona Cardinals)
Rueben Bain, Jr., Edge: No. 7 (Washington Commanders)
Akheem Mesidor, Edge: No. 12 (Dallas Cowboys)
Carson Beck, QB: No. 44 (New York Jets)
Keionte Scott, Safety: No. 70 (Cleveland Browns)
Anez Cooper, IOL: No. 75 (Miami Dolphins)
Miami and Ohio State tied for the lead with six players apiece in the CBS top 100, trailed closest by Texas A&M's five. If that trend holds across the entire draft, it would be the second time in three seasons that the individual game with the most picks in the following spring's draft did not involve an SEC team, and the first to involve an ACC squad since the 2014 Florida State-Louisville game. (Miami-Ohio State will almost certainly win when using our Selection Points formula, which scientists recommend as the most accurate way to measure NFL draft production.)
Game with most selections in that season's NFL Draft:
2024: Ohio State (14) vs. Texas (12)
2023: Michigan (13) vs. Washington (10)
2022: Georgia (10) vs. TCU (8)
2021: Georgia (15) vs. Alabama (7)
2020: Alabama (10) vs. Ohio State (10)
2019: LSU (14) vs. Alabama (9)
2018: Alabama (10) vs. Oklahoma (8)
2017: Alabama (12) vs. LSU (7)
2016: Michigan (11) vs. Ohio State (7)/Alabama (10) vs. Florida (8) and LSU (8)
2015: Ohio State (12) vs. Notre Dame (7)
2014: Florida State (11) vs. Louisville (10)
2013: LSU (9) vs. Alabama (8)
2012: Florida State (11) vs. Florida (8)
The SEC and Big Ten tied with 10 first-round projections, followed by the ACC's six and the Big 12's four. Expanding to the CBS's projected top 100, the SEC still led the way with 37, followed by the Big Ten's 25, and the ACC and Big 12 at 16 apiece. The Group of 5 placed four, and Notre Dame two.
The It Just Means More Conference has led college football in annual draft picks for 19 straight years, including a record 79 last spring. That streak assuredly reaches 20 next month.
But there's a difference between a rank-and-file draft pick and the elite-of-the-elite at the tippy top of the draft. That's the entire point of the event, after all. And in the post-NIL world, the hunt for elite talent increasingly takes NFL talent evaluators outside the SEC's borders.