GAME OF STREAKS
After Western Division member Alabama won the inaugural SEC Championship game in 1992, Eastern Division teams reeled off six consecutive victories:
1993: Florida 28, Alabama 13
1994: Florida 24, Alabama 23
1995: Florida 34, Arkansas 3
1996: Florida 45, Alabama 30
1997: Tennessee 30, Auburn 29
1998: Tennessee 24, Mississippi State 14
From 1999-2008, neither division won the SEC title game more than two years in a row. But since 2009, West teams have won it five consecutive years:
2009: Alabama 32, Florida 13
2010: Auburn 56, South Carolina 17
2011: LSU 42, Georgia 10
2012: Alabama 32, Georgia 28
2013: Auburn 59, Missouri 42
After 22 years of SEC Championship football games, the Eastern and Western divisions are tied: 11 wins apiece.
But just as East teams dominated the early years of the league title game, winning six in a row from 1993-98, West teams have ruled recently, winning the past five by an average margin of 22.2 points.
West champ Alabama is a 14 1/2-point favorite over East champ Missouri to continue the recent trend Saturday in the Georgia Dome. Both teams posted 7-1 records in league play during the regular season, but the tougher competition in the West casts the numbers in different lights.
Consider this: The College Football Playoff selection committee this week ranked the SEC West champ No. 1 in the nation. It ranked the SEC East champ No. 16.
Gary Danielson, former NFL quarterback and CBS Sports’ lead college-football analyst, sums up the difference between the divisions in three words: “level of talent.”
He added, “The football teams are much stronger in the West. There is no doubt about this. It’s just a much tougher path through the West than it is through the East.”
Mike Farrell, national football recruiting director for Rivals.com, said the West has widened the gap by parlaying four national championships in 2009-12 — three by Alabama and one by Auburn — into further recruiting gains. West programs had three of the SEC’s top four signing classes this year and five of the top six last year, according to Rivals’ rankings.
“The SEC East has the advantage geographically in recruiting: They’ve got the states of Georgia and Florida,” Farrell said. But the West’s success has allowed more of its teams to “go into fertile recruiting areas,” he said.
“Alabama is recruiting on a level higher than everybody else,” Farrell said. “Then when you get guys like (Ole Miss coach Hugh) Freeze and (Mississippi State coach Dan) Mullen, who are really, really good recruiters, it’s a situation where the East is a bit stale.”
SEC West teams were 10-4 vs. East teams this season. It’s worth noting that the East’s top two teams, Missouri and Georgia, were 4-0 against the West, while the rest of the East was 0-10. But it’s also worth noting that neither Missouri nor Georgia played any of the West’s three highest-ranked teams (Alabama, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, all currently in the nation’s top 12, all higher than any East team).
“You look at the SEC West, and you see more dynamic playmakers on offense,” Farrell said. “I think that is the biggest difference (between the divisions) right now.”
Florida and Tennessee have accounted for nine of the East’s 11 wins in SEC title games — seven by the Gators (including four in a row in the 1990s) and two by the Vols — but neither team has reached the game since 2009. Over the past five seasons, Florida is 21-19 and Tennessee 10-30 in SEC play.
“Clearly, Tennessee and Florida being down hurts the East,” Danielson said.
In the West’s current run of five consecutive SEC championships — two apiece by Alabama and Auburn, one by LSU — just one title game was decided by fewer than 17 points: Alabama’s 32-28 win over Georgia in the 2012 game, which famously ended with the Bulldogs at the Crimson Tide 5-yard line.
Talk of the West’s superiority was amplified this season, especially when the division at one point had three teams ranked in the nation’s top four. By contrast, back-to-back East champ Missouri didn’t garner much respect even within its own division. The SEC’s annual preseason media survey picked the Tigers sixth in the East last year and fourth this year.
“I think our players drew off of that a little bit — the underdog, maybe not getting the respect you want to,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “I think that’s OK a little bit. … Certainly our players are aware of what’s happening and what’s out there.”
What’s out there are widespread predictions that Alabama will extend the West’s winning streak in SEC title games to six, which would match the East’s 1990s run as the longest by either division in the game’s history.
“It’s a cyclical thing,” Farrell said. “It’s not going to be SEC West on top forever and SEC East down forever.”
But “it is going to be that way for at least the next few years,” he suspects.
