Will Alabama be picked to win the West? Or the SEC? A look back at the aftermath when that didn't happen
If Alabama is picked to finish 2nd in the West behind LSU, get ready for it.
The yummy rat poison is coming.
That scenario doesn’t seem far-fetched considering you could argue that the Tigers, fresh off a West title wherein they beat Alabama in Year 1 of the Brian Kelly era, have fewer personnel questions. Gone are Bryce Young and Will Anderson. Gone are coordinators Bill O’Brien and Pete Golding, though depending on who you ask, some might consider that an upgrade.
What’s an undeniable upgrade to Alabama’s national championship odds is if the Tide get a rare preseason media poll snub.
History tells us that nothing awakes the beast more than poking a stick at it and saying it won’t reach Atlanta or that it won’t win once it gets there. If we exclude the first year of the Saban era in 2007, we’ve got a 15-year sample size of the Tide in preseason media polls. Here’s how that’s gone:
As you can see, the only instances the past 15 years in which Alabama wasn’t picked to win the West came in 2008 and 2012, and obviously, both seasons, the Tide won the division. While the 2008 squad was stopped short by the Tim Tebow-led Gators in the SEC Championship, that 2012 team rolled to a title.
But wait, what about 2015? Wasn’t Auburn picked to win the SEC that year?
Yes, the Tigers got all the preseason buzz, only to go 2-6 in SEC play with the infamous Jeremy Johnson hype train derailed. Alabama, however, still was picked to win the West that year. Weird, I know.
Maybe that’ll happen again in 2023, and LSU will be picked to win the SEC, but not win the division (it’s strange to me that it’s even possible for that in the voting because obviously you have to win your division to play in a conference championship).
The more likely yummy Alabama rat poison, though, is that Georgia will be picked to win the SEC.
The last instance which Alabama wasn’t picked to win the division or the SEC was 2012. Go figure that was on the heels of a national championship, but I guess a 4th-place West finish in 2010 and a 2nd-place finish in 2011 talked voters out of Alabama as the preseason West pick. Nationally, the Tide started at No. 2 in the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll, while a Lane Kiffin-led USC team was the preseason No. 1. Also weird, I know.
Not so weird is the fact that since 2008, there are essentially 4 instances in which Alabama was given some of that yummy preseason SEC poll rat poison, and here’s how that turned out:
Bingo. There’s your key data point.
Of the 4 instances in the past 15 years wherein Alabama was not picked to win the West or not picked to win the SEC, it won both en route to a national title 3 times. And I’d argue that 2008 squad proved plenty of people wrong by winning the West after being picked to finish 3rd in the preseason poll.
On the flip side, Alabama’s only instance of going from No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 to winning a national title was in 2017 (that’s actually the only instance of that occurring nationally in the past 18 seasons).
For a team that’s been deemed too predictably dominant during this decade-plus run of dominance, the data suggests it’s not that easy to project how Alabama will finish. We can all pretend that it should’ve been obvious that Alabama was going to win titles in 2009, 2012 and 2015 when it got those preseason slights, but that’s also the byproduct of having a 15-year sample size of this Saban era identity in Tuscaloosa.
Maybe this is all for naught and the Tide will still be picked to win the West for the 11th consecutive year. After all, LSU was still a 4-loss team and have to travel to Tuscaloosa this year. It’s by no means a given that we’re about to see the Tigers do something that hasn’t been done in 11 years.
If Georgia is picked to win the SEC instead of Alabama? It would have a much different vibe than the last time the Tide didn’t get preseason SEC love in 2015 and Auburn did, which I’m convinced was such a scarring result that we’ve all just decided not to overthink this by picking against Alabama.
The Dawgs are by no means “trendy” in the way that 2015 Auburn was. They’re 2-time defending national champs, yet they haven’t been picked to win the SEC since Saban arrived at Alabama. You have to go all the way back to 2004 to find the last instance of Georgia being the preseason pick to win the conference.
Could this be the year? Or will the default pick of Alabama still hold true?
For the first time in 8 years, it doesn’t seem crazy to suggest that yummy rat poison could be coming the Tide’s way.
And if it does, well, you’ve been warned.
