Here’s what Georgia needs to root for this weekend to make SEC championship

ATHENS — None of the four teams still alive for the SEC championship game will play a conference game this weekend.

Ole Miss is off, while Texas A&M and Alabama both play Football Championship Subdivision opponents: Samford and Eastern Illinois, respectively.

Georgia also steps out of conference, having already finished the SEC slate with a 7-1 record. The Bulldogs will take on a 1-9 Charlotte team that is a six-touchdown underdog this weekend.

A spot in the SEC championship game cannot be clinched this weekend for the Bulldogs. The simplest path to Atlanta involves losses by either Texas A&M or Alabama in their final SEC games. Those come next Friday for the Aggies against the Texas Longhorns and on Saturday against Auburn for Alabama.

By the time those games start, Georgia will have wrapped its regular season finale against Georgia Tech, which is set for a 3:30 p.m. start on Nov. 28.

There’s nothing Georgia can presently do to help its chances of getting to Atlanta.

But other SEC teams can lend a helping hand, as opponents’ combined conference winning percentage will, in all likelihood, play a determining factor in who goes to Atlanta. Georgia, Texas A&M, Alabama and Ole Miss didn’t all play each other and would have the same record against common opponents. That is where conference opponent winning percentage would come into play in the event of a three- or four-team tiebreaker.

Effectively, that tiebreaker measures how well each SEC team’s conference opponents did in SEC games. Heading into this week’s set of games, Georgia’s eight conference foes have a combined record of 26-28 in conference games, good for a .481 winning percentage.

Alabama’s conference opponents have the exact same record and thus the same winning percentage. In the event Georgia and Alabama finish with the same conference opponent winning percentage, Alabama would go to Atlanta thanks to the head-to-head win over Georgia.

Ole Miss’ conference opponents’ winning percentage sits at .345, while Texas A&M’s is a ghastly .229. The Bulldogs have a healthy edge over those two teams.

But there are four SEC games this weekend. Three of them will have an impact on Georgia’s conference opponent winning percentage. The fourth, Missouri at Oklahoma, guarantees a win and loss for Alabama as the Crimson Tide played both teams.

In the Texas-Arkansas game, Georgia should want the Longhorns to win. Georgia played Texas just last week but did not face the Razorbacks this season. A Texas win improves Georgia’s conference opponent winning percentage while a loss hurts it.

The same goes for this weekend’s game between Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Georgia beat Kentucky 35-14 in October. What makes this game matter is that Alabama needs Vanderbilt to win to help its conference opponents’ winning percentage. This game will be the most consequential of the weekend for those two teams.

Georgia will add one win and one loss when Florida and Tennessee kick off this weekend, as the Bulldogs beat both teams this season. A Florida win would benefit Georgia more, as Alabama only played Tennessee.

We’ll stop short of saying Georgia should root for Florida because the Gators are still a massive rival for the Bulldogs.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart made it clear that playing in the SEC championship game matters greatly to him. Getting to Atlanta for a fifth consecutive season would match a feat only accomplished one other team in league history, by Florida from 1991-95.

“I’m a kid that grew up in the SEC footwork and thinks that’s one of the key ingredients, most important games,” Smart said. “To talk about the future and what that holds, I can’t even speculate what that holds. To talk about the way our coaches look at it, regardless of how they look at it, how are they going to perform on the field on Saturday? They’re going to go perform to win, which puts you in that game.”