Six SEC teams were included among the top 12 of the Associated Press preseason Top 25. No other SEC team was ranked. The nation’s best conference had split into divisions beyond East and West. These were heavyweights and cruiserweights.
Not one of the SEC’s half-dozen best teams — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M — lost to one of the league’s bottom feeders in 2012. The Big Six went 30-0 against the Lesser Eight. The new season began the same way. As of noon on Oct. 12, the Big Six was 10-0. Then Georgia lost at home to Missouri. Mere anarchy was loosed upon this corner of the world.
On Saturday, each of the Big Six played one of the Lesser Eight. Tennessee beat South Carolina on a late field goal. Ole Miss beat LSU on a late field goal. Vanderbilt beat Georgia on a late touchdown. Auburn beat Texas A&M on a late touchdown. Missouri, which has risen from bottom feeder to No. 5 in the first BCS rankings, beat Florida like a rug. Of the Big Six, only Alabama prevailed.
Esteemed former colleague David Davidson, who was The Atlanta Journal’s college editor when I was actually in college, wrote to say he couldn’t “recall a more bizarre SEC Saturday in my time on this orb.” Double D has a firm grasp on history. This was jaw-dropping stuff.
If we check the BCS Top 25, we note that two of the Big Six — Georgia and Florida — are missing. We note also that the second- and third-highest-rated SEC teams are Missouri and Auburn, neither of which received a single vote in the preseason AP poll. Why would they? Missouri went 5-7 in its inaugural SEC run and was picked sixth in the seven-team East by voters at the conference’s Media Days. Auburn went 3-9, fired its coach and was picked fifth in the West.
Now that the Tiffany League has seen its showroom strewn with broken china, the inevitable questions follow: Why? Who? How? Some suppositions follow.
Trickle-down recruiting: When a conference claims seven consecutive BCS titles and isn't shy about saying so, its brand gets burnished. The best players gravitate to the best league, and even Alabama — insert grayshirting joke here — can't take them all. Robert Nkemdiche of Grayson High, the nation's No. 1 prospect of 2013, signed with Ole Miss. As unassuming as the Lesser Eight were on the field last season, seven compiled recruiting classes rated among the nation's top 30 by Rivals.com. (The exception was Missouri, which has done OK, too.)
The Big 12 effect: That conference has become a place where defense is a rumor — Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops insists the perception is erroneous — and in its first SEC season, Texas A&M became the one team to beat Alabama and ascended to the Cotton Bowl (where it hung 41 points on Stoops' Sooners) by letting a scrawny quarterback scramble and sling it. Fellow Big 12 expat Missouri lacks a Johnny Manziel, but the Tigers have seized first place in the SEC East by dint of an offense that spreads the field and moves in a hurry.
A decline in D: Credit the AP's Charles Odum, another longtime SEC observer, for suggesting this. When every game becomes a shootout, results can and will vary. (We see this in the NFL, where victory is often a function of who has the ball last.) A week after beating Ole Miss 41-38, Texas A&M lost to Auburn 45-41. Two weeks after winning in Knoxville 34-31, Georgia lost in Nashville 31-27. In 2011, five of the nation's top eight defenses, as ranked by yards against, hailed from the SEC; in 2013, only two of the top 20 do.
The peril of recruiting the biggest talents: According to NationalChamps.net, 25 of the 81 early entries to the 2013 NFL draft were from the SEC's Big Six. LSU lost 11 players, Barkevious Mingo and Sam Montgomery among them. Alabama lost Dee Milliner, Eddie Lacy and D.J Fluker. Georgia lost Jarvis Jones and Alec Ogletree. Texas A&M lost Outland Trophy winner Luke Joeckel. Of the 32 players taken in Round 1, nine were early entries from Big Six teams.
A heap of hurtin': South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney has been slowed by various ailments; quarterback Connor Shaw sprained his knee at Tennessee. Georgia tailback Todd Gurley has missed 3 1/2 games with a sprained ankle; receivers Malcolm Mitchell and Justin Scott-Wesley and tailback Keith Marshall were lost to knee surgery. Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel suffered a broken leg; tailback Matt Jones hurt his knee. But upstarts aren't immune. Nkemdiche of Ole Miss missed the LSU game with a tender hamstring. Missouri quarterback James Franklin separated his shoulder against Georgia. Vandy quarterback Austyn Carta-Samuels hurt his ankle, also against Georgia.
The overall effect: Chaos, with an asterisk. It became fashionable to deem the baseball playoffs a crapshoot once wild-card teams were admitted in 1995, but there was, for the first nine expanded postseasons, a pinstriped counterpoint. The New York Yankees won four World Series and six American League pennants over those nine years.
Alabama is to the SEC as the Yankees were to baseball. With the other five Big Six’ers having already lost at least twice, Bama stands alone at the summit, presumably impregnable. Now watch it lose to Tennessee.
OK, not to Tennessee. But maybe to Auburn.
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