Ad Disclosure
Florida in SEC East driver’s seat, but no team is eliminated from yet
By Andrew Olson
Published:
The upcoming Florida-Georgia showdown will be referred to as a semifinal game, an elimination game or even the SEC East championship game. For now, however, none of the seven teams in the division have been completely eliminated from tying for first place.
UF sits atop the division with a 4-1 conference record and is 3-0 against division foes with wins over Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. South Carolina and Missouri are both 1-4 and in last place. The Gators have three SEC games remaining against Georgia, Vanderbilt and South Carolina, and could finish 4-4 in the conference, so multiple teams finishing 4-4 cannot be ruled out yet.
Playing in the SEC Championship Game with more than two conference losses is rare. Twice a conference record of 5-3 was good enough for a trip to Atlanta: 2001 (LSU) and 2010 (South Carolina).
If Florida beats Georgia in Jacksonville, the SEC East picture will start to come into focus. A victory by the Gators insures that at worst they will finish 5-3 in the conference, and thus three teams would be eliminated, South Carolina, Missouri and the Kentucky-Tennessee loser. Georgia, Vanderbilt and the winner of UK-UT would be the division’s three-loss teams still in contention for first place.
If two teams finish with the same record in first place, head-to-head is the first tiebreaker. Georgia’s clearest path to Atlanta is to beat Florida Saturday and finish 6-2 in the league. If that’s good enough for a tie with Florida, the Bulldogs go based on the head-to-head win.
A three-way tie, last seen in 2003 when Georgia, Florida and Tennessee all finished 6-2, becomes more complicated. The first tiebreaker considered would be head-to-head, followed by every team’s record within the SEC East.
The inner-division record tiebreaker is bad news for Florida and Vanderbilt. In that scenario, the Gators would have dropped two of its three upcoming games with inner-division foes to finish 4-2 against the SEC East. The Commodores already have losses to Georgia and South Carolina and can finish at best 4-2 against the division.
Three teams have scenarios in play to finish with a 5-3 conference record while going 5-1 against the SEC East. UGA could defeat Florida and Kentucky but lose to Auburn. Tennessee would have to win out over Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt. Kentucky could notch victories over Tennessee, Georgia and Vanderbilt.
One of the most funky three-way tie scenario involves Florida, Georgia and Vanderbilt all finishing at 5-3 in the conference and 4-2 against the division. It could get crazy if each team went 1-1 against the other two and 1-1 against the SEC West. Deep in the SEC’s tie-breaking procedure is “best cumulative conference winning percentage of non-divisional opponents.”
For those whose heads have not completely spun off yet, that means there’s a possibility for the SEC West race to decide the SEC East. If not, the conference’s eighth and final tiebreaker would be a coin flip, and the team with the odd flip would represent the division.
The Florida-Georgia victor will have the power to eliminate all these wild scenarios. To clinch the division, however, that team needs to continue to win after Saturday.
To delve deep into the SEC division champion tie-breaking process and lose your sanity, click here.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
