History was achieved by the SEC in football, which isn’t anything new. But what is new is the record the football-crazed conference achieved on Sunday with the release of the Week 3 AP Poll, which featured 11 SEC teams, an all-time record for any league in 1 poll.
Leave it to the SEC to set this mark, and the league did it so early in the 2025 season, with only 2 full weeks of football having been played. The Big Ten had possession of the top 2 spots in the new AP Poll, but after that it was pure ownership by the SEC, starting with No. 3 LSU. No. 6 Georgia and No. 7 Texas gave the SEC 3 of the top-10 teams, but the SEC was just getting started.
Checking in at No. 11 was South Carolina, with Oklahoma at No. 13 and Tennessee at No. 15. Texas A&M followed at No. 16, with Ole Miss making it 3 SEC teams in a row at No. 17. Alabama was at No. 19, and the poll finished with an SEC flavor, with No. 24 Auburn and No. 25 Missouri making it a ridiculous 11 teams. So, basically, the SEC had almost half of the new top 25, with 11 of its 16 being ranked in the history-making poll.
Auburn and Missouri put the SEC over the top with this history-making poll, as both teams were unranked last week and entered the new poll on Sunday. The SEC could have had 12 ranked teams had Florida not gotten upset by South Florida on Saturday night, with the Gators going from No. 13 to the “others receiving votes” section on Sunday.
Here is the new AP Poll, with all of that SEC representation:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
