Get Used to These SEC Shakeups

Good luck predicting anything in this year's SEC. You'd have better luck winning the lottery three years in a row in a state that doesn’t have a lottery.

This past weekend showed us yet again how unpredictable and unforgiving college football’s best conference can be.

If you don’t bring it every week, you lose often. Sorry, try again next year.

Five SEC teams went into week six undefeated. Three came away unscathed, all of whom picked up impressive wins. And although the results of these star-studded matchups revealed something about each team, all of the drama left us with more questions than answers.

Is Mississippi the premier football state this year? Is Auburn the best team in the nation? Could Alabama’s dominance be declining?

What in the world is happening to South Carolina and LSU? Will Arkansas and Kentucky make bowl games in their places?

With the considerable strength of the West, is it at all possible for an East team to win the SEC championship?

These questions and many more plague us as we move toward the halfway point in the season, with the SEC still largely undecided. Nine teams across the conference still have a legitimate shot at winning their respective divisions.

Auburn jumped to the forefront of the SEC and national title race with its thorough disassembling of LSU, followed very closely by Mississippi State and Ole Miss (no, that’s not a joke).

South Carolina and LSU took major steps back, while Kentucky took a step forward. Alabama and Texas A&M are still top-tier teams, but will have to do some reevaluating this week. Every other team pretty much stayed in the same place.

But don’t expect that to hold up. If there’s anything we learned from this past weekend, it’s that everyone is vulnerable, and anyone can lose.

From this point on, every week can have major implications in the race for the SEC championship and the College Football Playoff.

Auburn, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss are now out in front of the SEC West, each in control of its own destiny. Alabama and Texas A&M are not far behind, each with only one loss and very capable of beating any of the teams mentioned above.

I’m excited to see how football’s best division shakes out by the end of the season, especially with every one of its team statistically capable of winning enough games to be bowl eligible.

With no guaranteed conference wins, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that no teams in the West will be undefeated in a few weeks.

Obviously either Auburn or Mississippi State will suffer their first loss this weekend, and both teams enter the home stretch of brutal schedules after a bye week. And Ole Miss had better be careful with a trip to College Station coming up. Texas A&M will be angry and eager to prove itself on its home turf.

But if even one of these three unbeatens can remain as such, someone has to drop a few contests. The trick is figuring out who will be losing all of these West games.

Before the season started, I was certain it would be Arkansas, but now I’m not so sure. LSU has the talent to compete with anybody, but raw skill gets you nowhere without experience. If Les Miles can’t figure out some way to kick start his offense, it could mean the Mad Hatter’s first losing season ever at LSU.

And as we’ve seen in recent years, it’s very hard to pull out of a nosedive once you’ve lost your first couple of conference games. The losses start to pile up, and snowball into a bad season.

Speaking of losing early, South Carolina has officially begun spiraling out of control in the East. Already suffering three SEC losses, the Gamecocks have all but played themselves out of the SEC championship game.

And right alongside South Carolina’s collapse has come the resurgence of Kentucky, who are one missed call away from starting out 5-0. Especially after the shenanigans of the past weekend, the Wildcats would likely find themselves somewhere in the top 25.

Is it farfetched to believe that the November 1 Missouri-Kentucky matchup could determine the winner of the East? Georgia clearly isn’t as good as Todd Gurley, and if they lose this weekend against Missouri, suddenly the Tigers and Wildcats are in control of the East.

“But what about Florida? They only have one loss,” some of you are saying. Florida’s record is deceiving, as they’ve been the beneficiary of questionable officiating in two separate games.

The Gators should be 1-3 instead of 3-1, but now the officials have forgotten what a delay of game penalty is in not one, but two games.

They are most certainly not in control of their own destiny, as their offense still isn’t where it needs to be, and they will not beat teams like Georgia or Florida State without scoring through three-fourths of the game.

All in all, it should be a crazy finish in the SEC this year. For the first time ever, both Ole Miss and Mississippi State are ranked in the top ten at the same time, Auburn is proving that last season wasn’t a fluke, and it’s possible that the seven best teams in the SEC are all in the West.

Amidst all of the uncertainty and volatility in the latter half of the SEC schedule, know this: there is absolutely no way to know for sure who will be on top at season’s end.

So just enjoy the ride.