It's August, which means it's (thankfully) time for football. Actually because there are no games yet, it's really only time for football talk. That isn't as good as actual football but still is better than watching the Braves.
In the spirit of the football (pre) season, Saturday Down South checks in this morning with its SEC power rankings. The SDS staff based its rankings on "returning talent, program buzz and overall value." That first criterion makes sense. I have no idea what "program buzz and overall value" mean but, like I said, it's football talk so I'll take it.
The Georgia Bulldogs check in at No. 3 in the SDS rankings behind Bama and Auburn. All three teams are listed as “College Football Playoff Threats” and SDS writer Brad Crawford offers the reasoning for the rankings:
It doesn't sit right with the majority of our staff labeling a team other than Alabama — the defending league champs — as the preseason favorite, but several staff members have jumped aboard the Auburn + Jeremy Johnson hype train on the Plains and I even went out on a limb and tabbed the Bulldogs as my favorite (I picked Alabama last season). All three of these teams, without question, are loaded on both sides of the football and don't appear to have any fatal flaws that would drop them down a notch amongst others. They'll all play each other in a round robin-style format during the regular season which will make for must-see TV. We're expecting a titanic rematch in Atlanta, but your guess as to which team is left standing in the West is as good as ours.
Note that Georgia is the only East team in the top six of the SDS power rankings. Next-highest is No. 7 Mizzou, followed by Tennessee. The bottom four: South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Another projected year of SEC Least also is why the 10,000 computer simulations used for ESPN's Football Power Index rate Georgia's schedule as 10th-toughest in the SEC and predicts a 9-3 record, yet gives the Bulldogs a league-high 25.5 percent chance of "getting to and winning (the) conference championship game."
Add all of that up and it’s clear the humans behind the SDS rankings and the computers that calculate ESPN’s FPI all believe the Bulldogs will run through the East. That’s probably what pretty much every other pigskin pundit will prognosticate. SDS calls Mizzou and Tennessee "Divisional Dark Horses" and predicts they will "duke it out for the title of second-best in the Eastern Division (unless Georgia falls flat as the heavy preseason favorite)."
Everybody knows there is no possible way that would ever happen.
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