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Bama News
Predicting SEC West Football Finish
This could be another Alabama-Texas A&M football race in the SEC West
247sports.com
Second of three parts
I truly believe I know more about Southeastern Conference football in the West Division than I do about those seven teams in the East. Obviously, Alabama is in the West and plays the other six teams in the division every year. The Crimson Tide plays Tennessee every year, too, but after 14 consecutive Bama wins over the once-proud Vols, it’s hard to take them too seriously. Maybe if Lane Kiffin had stayed. Or Butch Jones. Or Jeremy Pruitt.
But back to the point. We’re in the process of predicting the upcoming season for SEC football teams. Earlier we projected Georgia to win the East (going out on a limb there, right?). Today we look at the SEC West. And we’ll have another chalk prediction.
There will be upsets and there will be teams that are better than expected and there will be teams that are not as good as expected, perhaps owing to bad injury luck. But we have to make decisions in July.
There is some purpose in this. From time to time, I’m called upon to make predictions, either SEC or national, and I like to be consistent. That’s about all that can be hoped for in that I’m making guesses, albeit somewhat educated guesses since I study this college football subject. I’ll be prepared when I go to SEC Media Days in Hoover July 19-22 and fill out a ballot with this same order.
Here is how I see the SEC West race in July, my selections made without benefit of the nerds in the Almost Perfect Picks Department, who continue their annual six-month vacations:
- Alabama (12-0 overall, 8-0 SEC) – No surprise here. One would be hard-pressed to find a reliable college football analyst who didn’t have Bama winning its division, and the Tide looks to be the favorite in every 2021 game, including that non-conference opener against the newly-enriched Miami Hurricanes. (Money won’t buy happiness this quickly.) Last year’s SEC Championship Game will be revisited in the third week of the season when Alabama goes to Florida and there’s the likely top five matchup at Texas A&M plus the game where Nick Saban has been uncharacteristically unsuccessful, at Auburn. Nevertheless, there’s a reason Bama is the nation’s dominant team, won last year’s title with a 13-0 record, and coaching and personnel look to make this a possible repeat undefeated regular season.
- Texas A&M (11-1, 7-1) – Déjà vu. Of course, you could say the same thing about Alabama. And there’s the rub for Aggies Coach Jimbo Fisher. Like every other former Saban assistant who has gone against Saban as a head coach, Fisher has nothing to show for it, including A&M suffering its only loss last year to Bama. He’s promised his faithful a change and a look at our preseason All-SEC team shows he has a lot of fine players; and the game is in College Station. Still, there is that Saban thing. Otherwise, his scary games are Ole Miss in Oxford and LSU in Baton Rouge in November.
- Ole Miss (10-2, 6-2) – Lane Kiffin began his fourth college head coaching job, second in the SEC last year, and showed that he still has it as an offensive mind, The former offensive coordinator at Alabama under Saban went toe-to-toe with the Tide last year before finally succumbing, 63-48. His crossover games are against the two East teams we consider to be the weakest, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, and he has LSU and Texas A&M in Oxford. The final result could be even better, or it could be worse. We think clipboards will be making victory flights. Picking the Rebels to beat Auburn is particularly dicey with the Tigers having an open date the week before while the Rebels host LSU.
- LSU (9-3, 5-3) – There was a temptation to wait on this prediction to see if Ed Orgeron was going to survive a summer that exhausted no fewer than two operators on the Crimestoppers Hotline serving the campus. Orgeron had a magical 2019, but followed that with the worst season ever for a defending national champion. Starting with a blowout loss to Mississippi State, the Tigers managed only a 5-5 season and then self-imposed a bowl ban because of a bizarre and ongoing NCAA case. In a classic CYA move, Orgeron made coaching changes. The Tigers open against UCLA in the Rose Bowl, have Florida and Texas A&M in Baton Rouge, but play Alabama and Ole Miss on the road. As usual, the Tide and Tigers have the same open date the week before playing in Tuscaloosa.
- Auburn (6-6, 3-5) – Now, how much is Bryan Harsin’s buyout? Just kidding. Auburn is the only SEC West team with a new coach this year, and there have been some questions about a guy moving from Boise State to the roughest division in college football. He’s got a good résumé but a tough schedule with a non-conference game at Penn State, Georgia one of his crossover games from the East, and road games against LSU and Texas A&M. Harsin will get some time to build the program, and he’ll probably need it. He does benefit from some key returnees, including quarterback Bo Nix and tailback Tank Bigsby.
- Arkansas (5-7, 1-7) – Who couldn’t be in Razorbacks Coach Sam Pittman’s corner? The longtime assistant coach got his chance at a head job and made Arkansas competitive. Competitive. The record was only 3-7, and there were some blowout losses (52-3 to Bama, for instance), but also some agonizingly close defeats – 3 points to LSU, 2 points to Missouri, and 2 points to Auburn in a game that was absolutely lost by the Hogs because of SEC officiating incompetence. It’s hard to project progress for the Razorbacks. There’s a non-conference game hosting Texas, a crossover game against Georgia in Athens, a neutral site game against Texas A&M, and SEC West road games at Ole Miss, LSU, and Alabama. Arkansas has an open date before taking on Mississippi State where it gets its one SEC win, while the Razorbacks fall in the middle of seven straight games for the Bulldogs, which is why they won’t get a conference victory.
- Mississippi State (4-8, 0-8) – Everyone took notice when Mike Leach opened up his Mississippi State head coaching career with a shocking 44-34 upset of defending national champion LSU in Baton Rouge. The Air Raid was mostly unproductive, however, as the Bulldogs struggled to a 4-7 record. No extra points were awarded for State’s victory in the brawl that followed the football win over Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl. Things could be a little better this year, or they could be even worse. ESPN had a glitch in its original preseason power ratings putting the Bulldogs in the top 10, and the adjustment doesn’t seem like much of a correction with State still at No. 24 in the nation. The crossover games are manageable, at Vanderbilt and home to Kentucky, and Arkansas on the road is a possibility. The Dogs also have non-conference games hosting North Carolina State and at Memphis.
