Paul Finebaum admits the SEC is as wide open as he's ever seen it

Of the 16 teams in the league, 15 have winning records through three games, 11 of those are ranked, and nine are still undefeated in the SEC. That has Paul Finebaum seeing this version of the conference being as wide open as he’s maybe ever seen it covering the sport down in the Southeastern Conference.

Finebaum was asked about the conference race in the SEC while on ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’ on Monday. He thinks the current depth of contenders in the Southeastern Conference is more than 10 programs based on what he has seen so far this fall.

“I think it goes deep, goes close to double-digits because, quite frankly? You’ll hear this a lot, but the league is about as wide open as I’ve ever seen it and that’s something that I think we know but other people don’t quite accept,” said Finebaum. “You go to the Big Ten, you go to other leagues? You’ve got the cream of the crop. And, the SEC? That’s what they all liked to used to say about it, but I think we could objectively throw an endless number of schools into it right now.”

The SEC has No. 3 LSU, No. 5 Georgia, No. 8 Texas, No. 10 Texas A&M, No. 11 Oklahoma, No. 13 Ole Miss, No. 14 Alabama, No. 15 Tennessee, No. 20 Vanderbilt, No. 22 Auburn, and No. 23 Missouri all ranked in the latest edition of the AP Poll. Mississippi State is then 3-0 while Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina all being 2-1 with their lone loss coming in conference. Florida is the only team in the league with a losing record to this point with their losses the past two weeks to USF and LSU.

With that, no team has yet fully claimed the top spot yet in the SEC. LSU, Georgia, and Texas A&M would arguably make the best cases based on the quality of at least one of their three wins respectively, but there’s been plenty of impressive or improved play to this point in the Southeastern Conference. That leaves only one or two teams as out of the running right now for Finebaum, with plenty of others who could make their case in the conference over the course of this season by the end of November.

“I mean, Mississippi State has proven itself in one big game. Kentucky, to me, is one of the few schools that I would write off. I’ll defer to (Cubelic) on South Carolina – I don’t know what the health of (LaNorris) Sellers is, that was a devastating loss but you also know what they’re capable of doing. And, Auburn, to me, is a school that was hard to take seriously early on as a contender, but they’ve done extremely well to this point,” Finebaum read off in naming some teams.

“So, if I had to say which school I had the biggest questions about today, it would be the one I thought was going to win the league three weeks ago, and that’s Texas,” Finebaum added.

We’re a quarter of the way through the season for these teams in the SEC. Little has been too determined, though, as far as the hierarchy in the league based on the results so far, with two and a half months of football still left to play.