For about five years now, the SEC West has been regarded as the far-and-away best division in college football. Six of the division’s teams have seen time in the Top 10, and while Arkansas has yet to be ranked, they are considered far from a pushover. LSU dropped out of the rankings after looking outclassed in consecutive weeks (by Mississippi State and Auburn) but five teams from the division are still ranked in the Top 14.
The division’s record against opponents outside the division is, frankly, absurd. SEC West teams are 25-0 against teams from outside the SEC West. This can tell us a lot of things, but one important note is that no SEC West team has lost to a team from outside the SEC West.
However, non-conference records can often be deceiving. If we look into what each team has shown us and how they earned their ranking, we can start to ask some questions about how dominant the SEC West really is.
Let’s start with Texas A&M. The Aggies were ranked somewhere in the 20’s to start the season, then skyrocketed into the Top 10 after demolishing then-Top 10 South Carolina in Week 1. Since then, A&M slid their ranking up higher by blowing out some awful competition (Lamar, Rice, and SMU). Questions were raised when they were challenged by Arkansas and then, in their first truly competitive game, were blown out by Mississippi State. Meanwhile, their South Carolina win looks less and less meaningful, as the Gamecocks have fallen out of the Top 25 and don’t look to re-enter anytime soon.
Part of the problem with judging the SEC West is overall lack of challenge in non-conference play. It’s hard to get a good reading on teams in a division when, as a whole, those teams don’t play tough out-of-division schedules. For example, Mississippi State’s non-conference schedule is Southern Miss, UAB, South Alabama, and UT-Martin. In cross-divisional play, Mississippi State drew Kentucky and Vanderbilt. It would take something shocking for the Bulldogs to not go 6-0 with that schedule. So, any win for an SEC West team over Mississippi State will be over a team that went undefeated out of the division. But what does Mississippi State being undefeated out of the division really tell us? Not much at all.
Let’s look at it this way: the division’s best non-conference victory so far this season was LSU’s comeback victory over Wisconsin. The same Wisconsin team just got beaten by Northwestern. Alabama beat West Virginia to open the season and Auburn went on the road and beat Kansas State. After that, though, you have to really stretch to find a good non-conference win (or non-division win, because how much is that victory over South Carolina really worth now?) for any SEC West team.
Now, this in no way is any slight against teams like Auburn, Alabama, or LSU. They went up and challenged a solid team in non-conference play. Arkansas and Ole Miss tried to schedule good teams (Texas Tech, Northern Illinois and Boise State, respectively)–those teams just aren’t living up to expectations this year. Ole Miss may have lucked out, though, as Memphis looks like a top mid-major this season. Mississippi State and Texas A&M, though, just flat-out decided to play four patsies out of conference.
So, what does all of this mean? For each individual team, not much. It does tell us, though, that associating each of these team’s nonconference records with the division they play in might be foolish. Mississippi State and Texas A&M played a guaranteed 8-0 schedule for any decent power conference program (and for most good mid-majors). Jacking up their ranking because of those games is foolish.
So why am I writing this? Is the SEC West the best division in college football? Obviously. Does a 1-loss team from the division deserve consideration for a playoff spot before any other 1-loss team in the country? Certainly.
What it does mean, though, is that we have to be willing to re-think some assumptions we made early in the season. Any resume can always have some holes poked in it. That’s fine. But what we have to learn is to separate the irrelevant holes from the meaningful flaws. We have to be willing to admit that LSU and Texas A&M may have been overrated and not give teams so much credit for beating them. They may play in the SEC West, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily elite teams this year.
The season will shake itself out eventually. But if we want to be able to properly understand what the season is teaching us, we have to be willing to re-think all of our early-season assumptions. In this case, one of those assumptions is the SEC West as a bloc. Auburn and the Mississippi teams look very strong right now. Alabama has question marks, but also looks pretty good. LSU and Texas A&M, though, might require a bit more scrutiny at the moment. If we give those two a pass just because they play in the SEC West, we really won’t have learned anything past the fact that playing bad non-conference schedules leads to high rankings. And, honestly, that’s a lesson I hope isn’t true.
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