SEC West enjoys imbalance of power this season

Three games Saturday will match SEC West teams vs. SEC East teams:

SEC WEST STANDINGS

Team; SEC; All

Ole Miss; 4-0; 7-0

Mississippi State; 3-0; 6-0

Alabama; 3-1; 6-1

Auburn; 2-1; 5-1

LSU; 2-2; 6-2

Texas A&M; 2-3; 5-3

Arkansas; 0-4; 3-4

SEC WEST STANDINGS

Team; SEC; All

Ole Miss; 4-0; 7-0

Mississippi State; 3-0; 6-0

Alabama; 3-1; 6-1

Auburn; 2-1; 5-1

LSU; 2-2; 6-2

Texas A&M; 2-3; 5-3

Arkansas; 0-4; 3-4

This week’s SEC football schedule includes three cross-divisional games, and you probably won’t be surprised to read that in each of them the Western Division team is favored by double digits over its Eastern Division opponent.

West teams are 6-1 against the East so far this season, and the imbalance of power is so extreme that many observers were surprised when the West’s last-place team (Arkansas) was beaten by the East’s first-place team (Georgia).

Such high regard for the SEC West extends to the national rankings. Four teams from the division are in the top five of this week’s Associated Press poll: No. 1 Mississippi State, No. 3 Ole Miss, No. 4 Alabama and No. 5 Auburn. It’s the first time in the history of the AP poll that one league, let alone one division, has held four of the top five spots.

Intra-division games will eventually sort out the West, or perhaps result in a tangled tie, but for now take your pick.

“Everybody, I guess, is still talking about both Mississippis, but when it all plays out I know Auburn and Alabama both feel like they will be right there,” South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said this week. “It’s very interesting over on that side.”

South Carolina will play at Auburn in one of Saturday’s cross-divisional SEC games. The others are Alabama at Tennessee and Mississippi State at Kentucky. As of Thursday, Auburn was favored by 18 points, Alabama by 17 and Mississippi State by 13 1/2.

SEC West teams have won the past five SEC championships (Alabama and Auburn two apiece, LSU one) and four of the past five national championships (Alabama three and Auburn one). This season, the Mississippis have joined the titans.

Mississippi State has won three consecutive games over opponents ranked in the nation’s top 10, becoming the fifth team in college football history to do that. Ole Miss is 7-0 for the second time in school history, the first time since 1962.

“Four of the top five teams in the country are in the SEC, (and) there are probably a couple of teams in every (major) conference that, if they played one game, could beat any one of those four teams,” Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said in his weekly news conference. “What our league is about, and what our guys have to understand, is that it is not just one week. It is every single week.”

This week’s schedule includes the next of many compelling intra-West games that could shape the division standings: Ole Miss at No. 24 LSU on Saturday night. Still to come, among others: Auburn at Ole Miss, Auburn at Alabama, Mississippi State at Alabama, Mississippi State at Ole Miss.

If there’s reason to slow the runaway hype about the SEC West, it’s found in the teams’ non-conference schedules.

Although the West is 22-0 against non-SEC opponents, the division’s four teams ranked in AP’s top five have played a total of two games against opponents from other “Power 5” conferences: Alabama’s win over West Virginia (now 5-2 and ranked No. 22) in Atlanta’s Chick-fil-A Kickoff game and Auburn’s win at Kansas State (now 5-1 and ranked No. 11). Kansas State leads the Big 12, and West Virginia is tied for second.

The SEC West team that made the earliest splash this season has tumbled in the division standings. Texas A&M drew attention for a season-opening 52-28 win at South Carolina, the preseason pick to win the East. But since then both the Aggies and the Gamecocks have dropped to 2-3 in SEC play and seemingly out of their respective division races.

A&M lost soundly to Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Alabama, each of which may have gotten too much credit for handling what now seems to have been an overrated Aggies team.

“I know how to become a top-five team. Just play Texas A&M,” former UCLA, Washington and Colorado coach Rick Neuheisel said on the Pac-12 Network, according to reports.

Still, the 60 AP poll voters, representing all regions of the country, concluded four SEC West teams belong in the top five this week. And the Sagarin computer rankings went even further, ranking SEC West teams 1-2-3-4 and SEC East leader Georgia No. 5.