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O’Gara: LSU-Texas A&M is a massive game that’s showing us the beauty of a division-less SEC
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Earmuff it, 12-team Playoff haters.
If your goal is to push the narrative that the regular season has been ruined by the “oversaturated” nature of college football’s new way to crown a champion, you’re gonna want to divert your attention from Kyle Field on Saturday night. You’ll probably still be stewing over the Mizzou-Alabama game at 3:30 p.m. ET, which will prompt you to talk at someone about how upsetting it is that potentially both of those teams can still be alive for a Playoff spot.
But if you want to actually enjoy one of the pros of this first college football season of change, you’ll see something worth your entertainment. LSU and Texas A&M will battle to be the last SEC team without a conference loss. The winner of Saturday night’s game will have a direct path to Atlanta while the loser will also … still have a path to Atlanta in a division-less SEC.
Wait, what? Didn’t that just show exactly why the old system would’ve had higher stakes than this one, wherein the loser is still very much alive for an SEC title berth?
Not so fast. Yes, there’s more grace for the loser. I’ll get to that in a second. But don’t let that overshadow how good the winner of this game should feel, much like what it means to win that first game at the College World Series.
For A&M, a 5-0 start in SEC play would be unprecedented. Its only other 4-0 start in SEC play came in 2016, and it was followed by a 4-game SEC losing streak to close the regular season in what became the beginning of the end for Kevin Sumlin. This is the beginning of the beginning for Mike Elko. Beating another top-10 team and heading into November with total control of its path to Atlanta for the first time that late in the season would be monumental.
Not to get too ahead of ourselves, but if A&M wins this game, it would be tasked with winning road games at South Carolina (something that’ll be far from a given) and at Auburn, which most recently recorded 3 pre-October home losses for the first time in program history. With a win against LSU, the Aggies would set themselves up with extremely favorable odds to line up this wildly juicy scenario — 0 or 1 SEC losses going into the Texas showdown.
We’ve never seen a true threat to send the entire state of Texas into a nuclear meltdown, but having the first Texas-Texas A&M matchup in 13 years come with SEC Championship and Playoff implications for both teams would put that to the test.
Lord knows we’ve seen plenty of Alabama-LSU games with those types of stakes in the East-West era of the SEC. In 14 of their past 17 matchups, that winner won the West. But without divisions, you might think that game will lack stakes when they face off in a couple weeks. Nope.
Let’s play out those scenarios for both teams this weekend and you tell me which one will lack high stakes for Alabama-LSU:
- Scenario No. 1 — Alabama loses to Mizzou + LSU loses to Texas A&M = 2-loss LSU will be fighting to keep its SEC title path alive AND try to give 3-loss Alabama an unthinkable 4th loss to end its nearly nonexistent Playoff hopes
- Scenario No. 2 — Alabama loses to Mizzou + LSU beats Texas A&M = 3-loss Alabama can play spoiler and take 1-loss LSU’s SEC title path out of its hands and perhaps up to a tiebreaker
- Scenario No. 3 — Alabama wins vs. Mizzou + LSU loses to Texas A&M = 2-loss Alabama and 2-loss LSU are playing in a Playoff elimination game
- Scenario No. 4 — Alabama wins vs. Mizzou + LSU wins vs. Texas A&M = 1-loss LSU can all but eliminate 2-loss Alabama from the Playoff while taking a stranglehold on an SEC Championship/Playoff berth with 3 conference games left as a likely favorite in all 3 (at Florida, vs. Vandy, vs. Oklahoma)
Call me crazy, but in a division-less SEC, we’re actually setting up for more big-picture layers in the Alabama-LSU matchup. It isn’t just “the loser if this game can kiss the SEC Championship/Playoff/BCS Championship goodbye,” yet it’s still going to be incredibly important. If you disagree with that, let me know how Tiger Stadium looks on Nov. 9.
In years past, more times than not, the divisions have been decided in early November after that matchup. That sets up for 3 weeks of conference play wherein nobody is competing for a spot in Atlanta. This year won’t be the case. We don’t know if it’ll come down to tiebreakers or if it will indeed be head-to-head games like the Texas-Texas A&M regular-season finalé. All we know is that there are currently 7 SEC teams with 0 or 1 conference losses.
- Texas A&M, 4-0 in SEC play
- LSU, 3-0
- Georgia, 4-1
- Tennessee, 3-1
- Mizzou, 2-1
- Texas, 2-1
- Vandy, 2-1
Four of those 7 teams will be in action against one another this weekend (don’t forget about Texas-Vandy). This could be the last weekend with 2 such matchups, but don’t mistake that as intrigue fading as November nears.
Nah. This LSU-A&M game is anything but that.
The last remaining SEC unbeatens in conference play have a unique leg up, even after both teams lost their season openers in headliner nonconference matchups. In a year in which the SEC won’t have a single team with an undefeated overall record in November for the first time since 2007, LSU and A&M are jockeying for pole position heading into the home stretch. If the chaotic nature of 2024 is any indication, one would think that neither team has a straightaway to Atlanta.
But just to be safe, 12-team Playoff hater, steer clear of Saturday night at Kyle Field.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
