Media picks Alabama to win SEC West, Auburn to win SEC
Preseason predictions are rarely accurate. It’s why putting a ton of stock in them is foolish. But it’s certainly funny as hell to see preseason predictions that are flat-out guaranteed to be wrong.
At the conclusion of SEC Media Days on Thursday, the SEC released the media predictions for the season. Alabama was picked to win the SEC West while Auburn was picked to win the entire SEC.
Both teams are in the SEC West. The scenario is impossible. Only one team from the West gets to the SEC Championship Game.
How did this happen? The votes are tabulated via points, and more people picked Auburn to win the west than Alabama. But Alabama had more second and third-place votes than Auburn did. Because the teams were close in the SEC West rankings, the dichotomy happened.
Eery team in the SEC West got first-place votes for the division.
Votes are on a 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scale, meaning the first-place team in a division gets seven points while the last-place team gets one. Votes for the title game are one point each. Missouri, Kentucky, Vanderbilt and South Carolina were the only four teams to not get title votes. Vanderbilt was the only team in the conference to not get a division title vote.
Championship Voting
1. Auburn, 96
2. Alabama, 80
3. Georgia, 28
4. LSU, 9
5. Arkansas, 3
5. Ole Miss, 3
7. Tennessee, 2
7. Texas A&M, 2
9. Florida 1
9. Mississippi State, 1
SEC East
1. Georgia (166), 1498
2. Tennessee (36), 1231
3. Missouri (20), 1196
4. South Carolina (1), 830
5. Florida (1), 768
6. Kentucky (1), 534
7. Vanderbilt, 243
SEC West
1. Alabama (92 first place votes), 1405
2. Auburn (108), 1362
3. LSU (10), 870
4. Arkansas (6), 821
5. Ole Miss (3), 732
6. Texas A&M (4), 628
7. Mississippi State (2), 482
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
