There is still, understandably, some pain when those around the Georgia football program think of the 2012 SEC championship. The way it ended, what a victory would have meant, the inability to get back to the game since.
There should also, however, be a measure of pride that Georgia was that close. That’s the closest any team from the SEC East has been to winning the league over the past five years. And that Bulldog team almost certainly was the best SEC East team thus far this decade.
“Well, we were a very good team,” coach Mark Richt said. “We know how close we were to winning that game and having a chance to play for a national championship. But we didn’t get it done.”
No East team has since 2008, when Florida beat Alabama. The SEC championship has been won by a West team every year since, by an average of 20 points.
That’s reflected in the regular season, too: Since 2009, the SEC West has a 68-33 record against the East in the regular season.
So when will it turn around? The usual retort is that everything is cyclical, but there aren’t many signs of a change.
“It’s kind of been a long cycle,” LSU coach Les Miles said.
To be fair, that was also the case in the 1990s, when the East won six consecutive titles. (Florida the first four, Tennessee the next two.) From 1999-2008, however, neither division had more than a two-year championship streak.
The recent struggles of Florida and Tennessee are a big reason for the disparity. The question is how soon they are to getting back to power status. Florida is back to a first-year coach, Jim McElwain, while Tennessee’s Butch Jones is entering his third season.
South Carolina filled a bit of the void earlier in the decade, but are the Gamecocks headed downward after last year’s seven-win season, or will Steve Spurrier quickly return them to prominence? Kentucky and Vanderbilt both look a few years away, at minimum.
Last year the East did have a much better bowl record, going 5-0, while the West went 3-4. But even Spurrier threw cold water on that.
“Maybe when you’re not highly ranked, like all of us Eastern teams, you don’t get as strong an opponent in the bowl games,” Spurrier said. “That helped our Eastern side.”
The depth of the West may be exemplified by Arkansas, which finished last in the division last season, yet finished 7-6. The Razorbacks beat LSU, Ole Miss and Texas, although they were routed at home by Georgia.
“Anybody can get anybody on any given Saturday, but not like this league,” Arkansas coach Bret Bielema said. “Other people wanna talk about playing nine (conference) games, I invite them to play eight in the SEC and see what happens.”
There’s been no discussion lately of a nine-game schedule, or of changing the dynamics of the SEC schedule. Miles, who pushed for changes, was asked this week if he liked having to face each fellow West team.
“It’s just great,” Miles said, smiling widely. “Until they change the scheduling, I just can’t be any more excited than to compete in that league.”
Really?
“Yeah,” Miles said. “It’s a blast.”
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