Through eight weeks of the 2015 season, 31 conference games are in the books.
While those two months have given us a pretty good idea of how the SEC East may play out during the season’s final month, there are still many questions to be answered about the SEC West race. There will only be a couple questions answered in Week 9, as both LSU and Alabama will be idle.
There are four conference games on the slate for Saturday, with Arkansas and Vanderbilt playing nonconference opponents and Alabama, LSU, Mississippi State and Missouri on a bye.
Here are some things we can learn about the SEC championship picture from those games:
- Florida vs. Georgia: The annual meeting between two of the SEC East elites will be the league’s most intriguing game from a championship perspective. Florida sits atop the SEC East with a 4-1 record, and Georgia is the only team with a realistic chances of catching them at 3-2. A win for the Bulldogs would pull them even with the Gators at 4-2 and give Georgia the lead by virtue of head-to-head tiebreaker. A win for the Gators would not clinch the title because they still have a game against a 1-3 Vanderbilt team that could technically hold a tiebreaker if the Commodores win out and the Gators lose out, but that’s an extremely unlikely scenario. The SEC East is all but certain to belong to the Gators with a win on Saturday.
- Ole Miss at Auburn: Last week’s impressive win against Texas A&M has renewed some of the momentum for a potential SEC West title run for Ole Miss. Thanks to a win against Alabama and a game still to be played against LSU, the Rebels control their own destiny in the race. But the margin of error is slim, meaning that the Rebels cannot afford to lose this road game at Auburn. The Tigers, once considered to be a favorite to win the conference title, are effectively eliminated from the discussion after last week’s overtime loss at Arkansas. At 4-3 overall and a tough schedule ahead, Auburn is playing for a chance to assure postseason play.
- South Carolina at Texas A&M: Texas A&M’s SEC Championship stock has taken a beaten during the last two weeks. The Aggies now have two losses to two teams ahead of them in the SEC West standings, with a win in an upcoming game against LSU pretty much a “must have” to be in the discussion again. But Texas A&M has to hold serve against South Carolina first. Though South Carolina still has a game against SEC East leader Florida on the schedule, the Gamecocks are pretty much dead in the water in the divisional race with four conference losses already on the board.
- Tennessee at Kentucky: With both teams sporting three conference losses, this game is more about positioning themselves for a potential postseason appearance than it is about winning the SEC East. Technically, neither team has been eliminated from contention, but both would have the win out and receive serious help from the teams playing Florida, which already owns a tie-breaking victory against each of these teams.
Nick Cole is a former print journalist with several years of experience covering the SEC. Born and raised in SEC country, he has taken in the game-day experience at all 14 stadiums.
