Woah. We’re halfway there.

Well, sort of. Technically, we won’t reach the halfway point of the regular season until the middle of this week, and for some teams who haven’t played 6 games yet, the halfway point will be after next week.

Associated Press Top 25 voters now have essentially half a season worth of data to come to their opinions on.

Here were my takeaways from the unofficial halfway point AP Poll:

1. Oh my, SEC

That’s not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, not 6, not 7, but 8 SEC teams in the AP Top 25. Yowza.

I was wondering if this was going to happen because it sort of took the perfect storm. With 3 SEC teams in the top 15 losing, we knew that they likely wouldn’t fall out of the poll entirely, and with fringe teams like Florida, Mississippi State and Texas A&M winning (Florida was the only ranked team before this week), the chances of a strong top-25 presence were strong.

I’m not convinced that all 8 of those teams are going to finish in the top 25, but I’d argue that all are worthy. Why? All of them either have one loss or less, or they’re a 2-loss team coming off a win against a top-15 team. That’s a pretty good scenario for the conference.

Obviously this will sort itself out in SEC play, but for now, just consider this conference-by-conference comparison of top-25 teams:

  • SEC — 8
  • Big Ten — 4
  • ACC — 3
  • Big 12 — 3
  • Pac-12 — 3
  • AAC — 3
  • Independent — 1

That’s right. The SEC has double the amount of top-25 teams as any other conference. A lot of that has to do with how well teams like Alabama, Auburn and LSU did in non-conference play.

It won’t stay like this forever, but for now, it’s darn impressive.

2. The Kentucky drop could’ve been worse

I’ll be honest. I was bracing for the Wildcats to be more of a fringe top-25 team instead of where they’re at coming in at No. 18. Why? Well, I assumed that confirmation bias would take over and Kentucky’s first loss of the year would show the skeptics that they aren’t an elite team.

Credit: John Glaser-USA TODAY Sports

I was a bit wrong on that. Credit voters for not deciding that Kentucky’s lone blemish — an overtime road loss against a solid Texas A&M squad — was worth dropping it out of the top 25.

I will say, though, that I’d probably still rank Kentucky ahead of the likes of Wisconsin and Oregon, neither of whom have better wins than Kentucky. By the way, Kentucky’s win at The Swamp is looking even better after what the Gators did.

There’s still a solid chance that the Wildcats win against Vanderbilt and Georgia to set up a huge SEC East showdown between top-15 teams in Lexington.

3. I’m actually OK with the LSU-Florida and the Mississippi State-Auburn ranking

I was ready to be fired up about this because those teams faced yesterday and now have the same records. Yet it’s LSU (No. 13) who still finds itself ranked ahead of Florida (No. 14) while Auburn (No. 22) is still ranked ahead of Mississippi State (No. 24).

Usually, I’d be upset about that. I’d say, why wouldn’t voters acknowledge the head-to-head matchup? Some did. Others didn’t. I don’t have a problem either way and here’s why.

LSU and Auburn both picked up monumental non-conference wins against top-25 teams. Florida and MSU didn’t get that chance. And while MSU won rather convincingly against Auburn, LSU played Florida down to the wire. Florida and MSU did both get home-field advantage, too. Is that everything? No, but it can certainly sway a result.

That’s not my way of saying Florida and MSU only won because they played at home. But with how close both of those teams are right now — Auburn dropped 14 spots for losing an SEC road game while LSU fell 8 for losing on the road vs. a ranked Florida team — that actually shows that the head-to-head was acknowledged a fair amount.

Congrats, voters. You didn’t mess everything up.