You turn you back for one minute and, all of a sudden, the word on the streets is that the SEC is not the bell-cow dominant force in college football anymore.

The league can counter with the old top-to-bottom argument — you don’t want to mess with the season-long schedules they can lay out for you.

But, fact is, the SEC not only hasn’t won a national championship in two years now — oh, the horrors — the league hasn’t even had a team in the championship game as the Big Ten has gone back to back with Michigan and Ohio State.

When did this happen?

Well, this won’t be much consolation, but …

While those distractions were going on, the SEC is now unquestionably the nation’s leader in … basketball?

Yeah, hoops.

Who’d have thunk it?

But just check the AP top 25.

There are four SEC teams in the top eight, and none of the them are named Kentucky.

The Wildcats are among the five other SEC teams in the top 25, which comes to nine total in the poll.

No other conference has more than five.

If you’re still adding it up, two others were receiving votes but are having trouble being taken seriously.

That’s great if you’re No. 1 Auburn. Or No. 4 Alabama. Even No. 5 Florida or No. 8 Tennessee.

But if you’re, say, LSU … well, the Tigers might indeed be a much improved team in Matt McMahon’s third year into a major rebuilding effort.

It’s tough to tell.

It’s a minefield out there is all it is, certainly no place for the faint-hearted.

How tough is it?

It took the cannibalism of league play the cull the SEC ranked teams to nine. At one point or another during the season, 14 of the 16 have been ranked.

Sorry, ACC. Tobacco Road might be the traditional hot bed of the sport, but no longer, not this season.

The SEC settled that discussion while serving notice during the made-for-TV ACC-SEC Challenge, 16 head-to-head on-court battles.

You probably missed it. It raised more eyebrows outside the Southeast than within.

Nobody important really noticed because it was early December and football was just gearing up for the meaningless (but still must-see) portion of the bowl season.

Yet all the SEC did was go 14-2 in those head-to-head ACC matchups.

The two setbacks for the SEC were its best team, Auburn (which lost to No. 2 Duke), and its most basket-obsessed team and traditional bell cow, Kentucky (which fell to a football school, Clemson).

But that was it for the ACC.

Even LSU contributed with a win, beating Florida State 85-75.

Whether an SEC team eventually wins the NCAA Tournament, the hoops top-to-bottom discussion is over.

LSU is down there sort of near the bottom — not rock bottom, but within shouting distance.

Maybe the Tigers could join the ACC for basketball, maybe just for a year or two, and then check back with the SEC.

Not really. But the SEC is no place to be resurrecting a program these days.

Really, LSU has some holes, of course, but for the most part the Tigers don’t look half bad.

They are doing their best, playing hard. They went 11-2 in nonconference play. But they are 1-6 in the SEC. It could be worse — LSU beat Arkansas and owns the tiebreaker over the 1-6 Hogs. And South Carolina still hasn’t won a league game — 0-8.

But maybe the worst is over for LSU.

Right now the SEC can hand you back-to-back games against a No. 1 Auburn and a No. 4 Alabama, with that one-two punch coming on the heels of a game with No. 11 Texas A&M.

All three were LSU losses, of course, and maybe the Auburn battle Wednesday best summed up the challenge of the also-rans in this league.

It was almost comical.

After LSU took a 2-0 lead Auburn missed its first six shots — all six in its first possession, all six of which the War Eagles kept with an offensive rebound.

LSU never did rebound one in that opening possession. Auburn finally threw the ball away after its sixth offensive board to give LSU another shot with the ball.

It was the first six of Auburn’s 25 offensive rebounds in its 87-74 win.

LSU didn’t have much better luck when it did get a rebound, many of them negated by another 20 turnovers, padding the SEC lead the Tigers already had in that dubious stat.

It won’t get much easier in this league.

But Saturday’s game at home against SEC-newcomer Texas would at least be known in the trade as a “winnable game” against a “gettable opponent.”

Nothing comes easy anymore, least of all for the Tigers.

But the Longhorns (14-7) are only 3-5 in SEC play.

So you’re saying there’s a chance …

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com