East
1. Tennessee (10-2) Loaded, experienced no apparent weaknesses - gets Bama at home
2. Florida (9-3) essentially 8 home games if you count UGA @ Jax, second year for Coach Mac
3. Georgia (9-3) QB? loses to Florida to take 3rd
4. Kentucky (7-5) 3 years of excellent recruiting, finally pays dividends
5. Missouri (7-5) will hang their hat on defense but will hit a few bumps with a new head coach
6. Vanderbilt (5-7) respectable defense but not enough overall talent and depth
7. South Carolina (3-9) Lost a lot of talent and coach with a record of failure at the helm
West
1. LSU (11-1) beats Bama at home and wins the tie break
2. Alabama (11-1) great team but schedule doesn't favor
3. Ole Miss (9-3) best of the rest - Chad Kelly is the real deal and can carry this team
4. Arkansas (8-4) getting better - schedule favors
5. Auburn (7-5) road games at Bama, Georgia and Miss dooms the Tigers - coach on hot seat
6. Mississippi State (6-6) Dakless Dawgs come back to reality
7. Texas A&M (5-7) Sumlin heads for the exits
Regular season games only
By and large, I like this ^^^.
In the East, the top 3 (in that order) look pretty solid. The order of other 4 will likely be determined in great part by how well they do against each other and who/where is their cross division opponent.
> UK and Mizzou both get 3 of the 4 games at home (Vandy and SC only 2). But UK travels to Mizzou and Mizzou travels to SC. That might be the deciding difference between 4th and 5th
> Vandy and SC must each play 2 of the 4 "key" games on the road. But Vandy must play both UK and MO on the road and has highly regarded Ole Miss as their cross division opponent.
So I'm going to put those last 4 of the SECE in this order
#4. Mizzou (especially if they find some offense)
#5. UK (should win at least 3 in the SEC this year)
#6. Vandy & SC (hard for me to see much difference here but we won't have to wait long...they play each other in week #1)
Other than UK's opponents I don't follow the SECW much. But it looks the same as the SECE with 3 top dogs and 4 "others". But the difference here is those 4 others figure to be much better teams than the bottom 4 of the SECE. To that point, Steele has AU #19, aTm #25, AR #28 and MSU #35 in his initial power poll. In contrast, #62 Mizzou is the highest ranked among the SECE "other 4" (Vandy #70, UK #74, SC #76). Now does this higher of SECW "bottom 4" mean more, or less, predictability among those teams? I don't know, but...
> AU plays 2 of other 3 at home (MSU away) but plays at GA as their cross division opponent
> AR plays aTm, AU, MSU and cross division opponent MO on the road
> aTm plays must play AU and MSU on the road as well as cross divisional opponent SC on the road
> MSU gets SC, AU and aTm at home and cross divisional opponent UK on the road
I'm going to say that schedule favors MSU and they finish a somewhat surprising #4 in a tough SECW. Why?
Most are discarding MSU this year because they only return 11 starters and and none are named Zak Prescott. They may not equal their 19 wins under Prescott but we must remember in the 5 years before Prescott Mullen led the "Dawgs to 5-7, 9-4, 7-6, 8-5 and 7-6 records. I hate to get into recruiting rankings but over the last 5 years their recruiting rankings have been #30, #24, #38, #16 and #25 so I don't think the 'dawgs are going to collapse talent-wise. Furthermore, Mullen has done a great job of winning games at a place that has historically been pretty low on the SEC totem pole.
The quandary here is that I been very consistent about UK winning 6 game this season but, to do so, they would almost certainly have to beat one of the teams I'm predicting as #4 in each division. And such a win would likely drop that team from the #4 spot.
All JMO.
Peace
