SEC Power Rankings, Week 12: Florida clinches SEC East
By John Buhler
Won, but not going to a meaningful bowl game
Though the No. 25 Texas A&M Aggies improved to 8-3 on the year by beating the UTSA Roadrunners at Kyle Field on Saturday 23-10, this isn’t anywhere near the team that was the No. 4 team in the country in the first 2017 College Football Playoff rankings.
Texas A&M could conceivably get a New Year’s Six bowl bid, but the Aggies will get blown out without Trevor Knight playing quarterback for them. The Aggies could sell seats at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, but the Western Michigan Broncos would beat them on a neutral site at this time.
There are a lot of good things we’ve seen out of the Aggies this season, but Kevin Sumlin’s team has unfortunately run out of gas. They still have a huge game against LSU on Thanksgiving. LSU is playing better football than Texas A&M and should be favored over the Aggies on Thursday.
It’s not much, but the Vanderbilt Commodores 2016 bowl dreams are alive. The Commodores got their crucial second SEC win of the season by beating the cross-divisional rival Ole Miss Rebels easily on Saturday night, 38-17.
Vanderbilt still has to beat the No. 19 Tennessee Volunteers to get to crucial 6-6, but there is a way that the Commodores can still go bowling despite being 5-7 (2-6). Since Vanderbilt has such a great academic track record, the Commodores can get to a bowl at 5-7 should not enough teams qualify for bowl eligibility at 6-6.
This defense of Derek Mason’s is one of the best in the Power 5. The running game is strong and quarterback Kyle Shurmur is improving. Vanderbilt is playing well right now. It would not be shocking to see them upend Tennessee to get to 6-6. The Volunteers better watch themselves on Saturday.
It happened. The Kentucky Wildcats got their sixth win of the season by beating a winless Austin Peay Governors team, 49-13 to improve to 6-5. This is the first time that Big Blue Nation will go bowling since the 2010 college football season.
Kentucky can go into its massive in-state rivalry game with the Louisville Cardinals and play a loose, confident brand of football. The Wildcats know that regardless of outcome in Week 13, they will be going to a bowl game. Maybe Kentucky shocks Louisville like Houston did last week?
This win over Austin Peay takes head coach Mark Stoops off the hot seat. He has done a phenomenal job of recruiting in nearby Ohio to yield multiple top-40 recruiting classes during his time in Lexington. Let Kentucky’s 2016 success be a lesson on the importance of recruitment for dysfunctional Missouri Tigers football.
One could argue that South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp should be SEC Coach of the Year. How did he get this team that went 3-9 a year ago to a bowl game? He was brilliant in coaching defense during his first year in Columbia.
South Carolina got to 6-5 by beating the Western Carolina Catamounts on Saturday, 44-31. The Gamecocks let the lowly Catamounts hang around for a while, but the thought of getting a free Darius Rucker concert might have gotten South Carolina off its A game.
Like Kentucky, South Carolina gets to play a confident, loose brand of football this week against their superior arch rival in the ACC. The Gamecocks won’t be favored over the ACC Atlantic champion Clemson Tigers, but Clemson doesn’t put teams away like they should. You never know.
This was another run of the mill win for Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs football program. Georgia has absolutely had its ups and downs, but the Bulldogs are trending in the right direction under their first year head coach.
Georgia has a big in-state rivalry game with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. Smart’s predecessor Mark Richt went 13-2 against the Ramblin’ Wreck. This will be Smart’s first taste of this rivalry as a head coach. He knows it all too well from his playing days at Georgia.
Overall, Georgia is just an average SEC team this season. Defensively, the Bulldogs can compete with any SEC foe. When the offense comes together, this could be a strong team for Smart in 2017 or 2018.
The Arkansas Razorbacks have been consistently the most inconsistent team in the SEC this season. Some weeks, Bret Bielema’s team looks like a Top 25 team in college football. Other weeks, it seems like the Hogs need to go in a different direction at head coach.
Arkansas improves to 7-4 on the year by putting up 58 points on a rebuilding Mississippi State Bulldogs team. Like Georgia, Arkansas is just another middle of the pack team in the SEC. They are somewhere in that fourth to fifth range in the SEC West with Texas A&M, only ahead of the Mississippi schools.
The Hogs should improve to 8-4 on the year by annihilating the cross-divisional rival Missouri Tigers in the budding Battle Line Rivalry. It’s really up in the air how Arkansas will play in their bowl game. This is the most inconsistent team in the SEC in 2016.