If you are an SEC football fan, and obviously you must be if you are on this site, then certainly you could make an argument that the 2014 SEC West Division was the deepest division in the nation since the Power 5 conferences, minus the Big 12 currently, went to divisional play.

All seven West Division teams finished with winning records. Six of them were ranked at one point in the season, with only last-place Arkansas not appearing in the Top 25. Alabama, Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Auburn were all inside the Top 5 of the College Football Playoff rankings at one point or another. The Tide entered the playoff at No. 1, while No. 7 Mississippi State and No. 9 Ole Miss both played in New Year’s Six bowls.

Just to be fair and give an opposite view of things, some could argue the West was overrated in 2014. The Tide, Bulldogs, Rebels and Tigers all lost in their bowl games. Mississippi State and Ole Miss laid major eggs against Georgia Tech and TCU, respectively. LSU also lost its bowl game in an upset to Notre Dame. Only the two bottom teams, Texas A&M and Arkansas, won their bowl games. Meanwhile, five of the seven SEC East teams won theirs.

But that’s an argument for another day.

There are five SEC West teams in both 2015 preseason polls, the Associated Press and USA Today. None are lower than 20th (Arkansas in USA Today). The two missing are Mississippi State and Texas A&M, and they are the two schools leading the “others receiving votes” category. So clearly the pollsters still believe in the strength of the West.

So what would happen if multiple teams tie for the West Division regular-season crown? I could make a legitimate argument for all five ranked clubs. Their odds to win the West are: Alabama +215, Auburn +355, LSU +490, Arkansas +575 and Ole Miss +600. I don’t see A&M (+1250) or Mississippi State (+2300) having a realistic shot.

A two-team divisional tie is obviously easy to determine the tiebreaker as it’s head-to-head. In my mind, Ole Miss gets the short straw there among the contenders as it must visit both Alabama (Sept. 19) and Auburn (Oct. 31). Can the Rebels really sweep those? Doubtful. Most believe the West will come down to the Iron Bowl at Auburn.

If there are three or more teams tied for the West, the tiebreakers are as follows in order of use:

*Combined head-to-head record among the tied teams.

*Record of the tied teams within the division.

*Head-to-head competition against the team within the division with the best overall conference record (divisional and non-divisional) and proceeding through the division.

*Overall conference record against non-divisional teams.

*Combined record against all common non-divisional teams.

*Record against the common non-divisional team with the best overall conference record (divisional and non-divisional) and proceeding through other common non-divisional teams based on their order of finish within their division.

*Combined SEC record of the team’s cross-divisional opponents.

Thus it’s potentially important to face the better teams from the SEC East for tiebreaker purposes. Alabama checks off that list as it visits Georgia and hosts Tennessee, the two preseason favorites in the East. Auburn hosts Georgia but also visits Kentucky; that could hurt the Tigers.

Ole Miss is really hurt here because it hosts Vanderbilt, which could easily go winless in the SEC again and visits rebuilding Florida. LSU visits South Carolina and hosts Florida. Arkansas is in decent shape for this tiebreaker as its visits Tennessee and hosts two-time East champion Missouri.

So ranking the strength of that potential tiebreaker, you’d have to go: Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Auburn and Ole Miss.

The last three-way tie in the SEC was in the East in 2003 with Georgia, Tennessee and Florida all finishing at 6-2. Back then, the conference used the BCS standings to eliminate the lowest-ranked team and then used head-to-head BCS rankings to decide the outcome. Georgia, which beat Tennessee during the season but lost to Florida, was declared the East champion. The Bulldogs lost, 34-13, to LSU in the SEC Championship Game.

It wouldn’t be ideal for the SEC’s College Football Playoff chances for three teams to tie for the West Division lead at, say, 6-2 in SEC play. At least not unless Georgia was responsible for creating a few of those losses. But as competitive as these SEC West games should be, it’s possible that we get chaos in the division — and a three-team tiebreaker — at the end of the season.