Randy Smith: SEC racing is a mistake

by Junna Base November 10, 2024

Randy Smith

We’ve been hearing for months that the presidential election was a bad decision. Well, we can say the same thing about the SEC football race. The league’s last undefeated team, Texas A&M, was soundly beaten by South Carolina on Saturday night, leaving a total of five league teams with a single loss. Georgia, A&M, Tennessee, Texas and LSU all have one loss, while four others have just two. With only four weeks of the regular season left, it’s easy to see what a challenge remains.

When the SEC grew to 16 teams with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma, it was decided to eliminate divisional play and play the championship game between the top two teams in the league standings. It would be impossible to predict how this will play out as so many teams are still very much alive. The good news is that these one-loss teams will face each other in the coming weeks and most of these five teams will be eliminated. For example, Tennessee still has to play Georgia, Texas A&M still has to play Texas, LSU doesn’t have a team with a single loss on the schedule, but they still have four tough conference games left, including this week’s SEC headlining game against Alabama.

If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I would say the winner of the Tennessee-Georgia game would face the winner of the Texas-Texas A&M contest in the SEC championship game in Atlanta. But…there’s still a lot of football left and any of the other teams I mentioned could sneak in. The overall record in the SEC this fall is astounding. Who would have thought South Carolina would dismantle Texas A&M the way they did on Saturday? And who would have thought that Vanderbilt would be nationally ranked and have wins over Alabama and Auburn?

As for Tennessee, no one is happy with the way they played, but they should be very happy with the wins. Maybe… the Vols just haven’t reached their peak yet and their best football is still ahead of them. This is a special team and this could be a very special season. However, as we can easily see, there are also some other teams that are planning a special season. Time will tell.

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Randy Smith can be reached at [email protected]

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