With that said other than Alabama, Georgia, occasional run by Auburn and LSU who has a shot in the SEC to win a National Championship ? Florida has done nothing since Meyer and Tebow and all the once great Florida teams have struggled as of late. I don't think it was all fear from Lincoln when it comes to SEC. He probably just looked at the future direction of College Football with NIL's and Conferences governing themselves with the NCAA abdicating that responsibility. The SEC is going to be a very crowded space with Texas and Oklahoma joining. Recruiting battles will be crazy. He also has to be smart enough to know he has done about as much as he can do at Oklahoma with 3 playoff appearances, and he got progressively worse with each appearance losing by a larger margin.
He can get the players necessary to win a National Championship at USC but he has to get the Defensive talent and more importantly a DC that get the job done. He can obviously put enough points on the board to win but if you want to win a National Championship you have to at least have a Defense like Cincinnati.