It happened in 2012. Georgia won the SEC East and played Alabama for the conference title. Georgia Tech tied Miami and North Carolina for first in the ACC Coastal but, since the Tar Heels were ineligible and the Hurricanes chose in late November to remove themselves from postseason play, the Yellow Jackets advanced to meet Florida State in the league championship game.
It can happen again, this time without an asterisk. Picked to finish second behind South Carolina in the East, Georgia was indeed beaten by the Gamecocks but has fewer conference losses, which is hard to manage so early in a season. Tech was tabbed to finish fifth in its division but is tied for first. It’s unclear how good either local entry is, but the coast (not to mention the Coastal) looks clear. The prospects for each:
Georgia: The Bulldogs' game with South Carolina remains ballyhooed, but the cold truth is that its winner hasn't played for the SEC title since 2010 and surely won't in 2014. Having lost two SEC home games in September, the Gamecocks have tossed their rousing victory over the Bulldogs in the trash.
The only East team unbeaten in league play is Missouri, which beat South Carolina in Columbia East but lost to Indiana — which lost to Bowling Green and Maryland — in Columbia West. If the Bulldogs win at Missouri on Oct. 11, they should take the division. If they don’t, they’ll be reduced to hoping the Tigers lose three times. Mizzou still has road dates at Florida, Texas A&M and Tennessee, but going 1-2 in those would probably be enough to secure a second consecutive East title.
Beat Missouri, and Georgia’s path is simple — just keep winning. Arkansas in Little Rock could be problematic, though the Hogs haven’t won an SEC game under Bret Bielema. Florida in Jacksonville is never a day at the beach, but Will Muschamp is still coaching the Gators. Auburn in Athens on Nov. 15 will be really tough, but Georgia was within a batted ball of beating the Tigers last season.
Georgia hasn’t reconciled what it has become — a great running team — with the finesse offense favored by Mark Richt and Mike Bobo. Nobody is suggesting that the Bulldogs forsake the forward pass, but Todd Gurley and his understudies will determine how far this team goes. Provided Georgia doesn’t outsmart itself, those runners could override a leaky secondary and a shaky quarterback to reclaim the East.
Georgia Tech: Back to that ACC preseason poll. The four teams ranked ahead of the Jackets — Miami, Duke, Virginia Tech and North Carolina — have lost conference games. (Three of the four have lost non-league games, too.) The Jackets are 4-0 overall and 1-0 in ACC play. Pittsburgh and Virginia, picked sixth and seventh, likewise are unbeaten in the conference. Which is a long-winded way of saying: This division is upside down.
Tech’s next two games are at home against Miami and Duke. Win both, and the Jackets will stamp themselves as Coastal favorites. That said, the ACC has wobbled so wildly — even Florida State is lucky not to have lost — as to defy handicapping. Games that once looked easy (or hard) might not be.
The soft part of Tech’s schedule figured to be the three-game stretch of Pittsburgh there, Virginia here and North Carolina State there. The Cavaliers, however, beat Louisville, and the Wolfpack led Florida State by 17 points. By way of contrast, the four-game run that began with the trip to Blacksburg appeared arduous, but the Jackets prevailed there and now face Miami, which lost badly at Louisville and Nebraska, and then Duke, which lost to Miami. As for the Oct. 25 date at North Carolina: The annually overblown Heels yielded 120 points to East Carolina and Clemson.
The joke in ACC media circles is that the class of the Coastal is East Carolina, which has beaten Virginia Tech and North Carolina but is housed in the American Conference. All we know for sure is that some ACC member will win the division, and that Georgia Tech — which was 30 seconds from losing to Georgia Southern — has as good a chance as anybody.
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