The rumors have been flying around for a while now, ping-ponging and bouncing here and about like a loose ball getting kicked around in the paint.

To wit: The Southeastern Conference has, kind of when no one was looking, become a — quote — “Basketball League.”

Whether it wants to be or not.

The whispers had been wafting in the back alleys for a while, but this season it hit critical mass, so to speak.

It wasn’t just that the SEC shattered the NCAA record when it landed 14 of its 16 teams in the 64-team March Madness field.

Not bad for a league that, as recently as a year ago, had 14 teams to its name.

But the truly amazing part is that it happened without a lot of uproar from the masses.

And the conference has backed it up.

This is sort of like “new money” barging into the country club.

The 14 record entrants amounted to 21 percent of the field. It was up to 25 percent SEC for the Round of 32, then 44 percent for the Sweet 16 and, in a season when Cinderella need not apply, half of the Final Four. Auburn and Florida join the other two No. 1 seeds, Houston and Duke, for the long weekend in San Antonio.

Watch out. Next thing you know, fans will be torturing innocent hoops bystanders with the chants of “S-E-C!, S-E-C!!!” the traditional and allegedly annoying accompaniment to the football exploits.

The basketball rise of the SEC seems pretty simple. You put your mind and wallet to it, hire really good coaches and — what do you know? — you’re now free to buy and kidnap players left and right without the pesky NCAA gumshoes snooping around.

If the SEC honestly wants to become a basketball league — and I’m not convinced it’s 100 percent all in on the notion — there is one vital element that needs taking care of.

Financially things are slick. The SEC’s 22-12 record in the tournament is worth a payout of $70 million, according to Front Office Sports, which tracks sports business dealings.

McNeese State’s upset of Clemson, by the way, was worth $2.1 million to the Southland Conference.

But the SEC needs a national championship trophy to validate things.

It’s been noticeably missing.

So the pressure is on Florida and Auburn. Since they play each other in Saturday’s semifinal, the league is guaranteed a spot in Monday’s national championship game.

That will be a start.

For all the hoopla on the surge of the league in the sport, the SEC hasn’t produced the national champion since Kentucky in 2012.

The SEC hasn’t even been in the national championship game since Kentucky lost to Kansas in 2014. That’s more than a decade.

The last time the SEC had a non-Kentucky team make the title game was Florida’s back-to-back national championships in 2006-07.

How long ago was that? The Georgia Dome in Atlanta and the RCA Dome in the Indianapolis, the two stadiums where the Gators won their consecutive championships, no longer exist. Dust in the wind.

Did I mention there might be mixed emotions within the league about having a spot assured in the title game?

There is the suspicion that it only reminds the SEC that it hasn’t even had a team in the football championship game the last two years.

Before that drought, the SEC had won four in a row, five of six and six of eight.

The standard there is seven in a row from 2006- 2012.

Now, that was doing you some dominating in a sport.

Even better, look at baseball, in which not only has the SEC won six of the last seven College World Series championships, it had six schools doing the final dogpile. So, yes, for all its newfound basketball riches, the SEC still has a lot of catching up to do on the court.

The pressure is on Florida and Auburn.

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