Texas A&M Football
The SEC West is deeper than any division needs to be
Three of the top four teams in the initial College Football Playoff rankings hailed from the SEC West.
SEC West teams — Mississippi State and Alabama, to be exact — went on to hold the No. 1 spot in said rankings for all seven weeks in 2014.
The entire division went bowling last season, the first such occasion since the ACC Atlantic did it in 2008 — and the first time a seven-team division has done it.
Yet, the division's teams went 2-5 in bowl games last season and none have won a national title since Alabama in 2012, creating doubt about their perch at the top.
So is the postseason flame-out proof that the SEC West is overrated, or a byproduct of being too deep for its own good? The debate is the crux of ESPN writer Adam Rittenberg's Wednesday look at the division's reload for 2015, which you can read here:
SEC West hasn't lost its luster or bluster - SEC Blog - ESPN
To sum up what we already know: the West's last-place team (Arkansas) schoolyard-bullied Texas, which finished tied for third in the Big 12, for 60 laughable minutes in the Texas Bowl; Texas A&M and LSU both ranked in the nation's top 15 six weeks into the season before divisional cannibalism took over (and the Aggies beat another third-place Big 12 squad, West Virginia, by eight in the Liberty Bowl); usual punching bags MSU and Ole Miss both spent half the season in the top 10; the West sinks the most money into the best coaching; and six of the division's seven teams finished in the top 19 of the recruiting class rankings.
"The future for this division?" LSU's Jalen Mills is quoted as saying. "You're going to have the national champ come out of the SEC West. It's as simple as that."
It remains to be seen in 2015, but five SEC West teams made ESPN's post-spring top 25.
The two that didn't? Texas A&M (which has five-stars littering its offense and adds John Chavis to a Myles Garrett-led defense) and Mississippi State (which brings that Dak Prescott guy back from an Orange Bowl team).
SEC West teams — Mississippi State and Alabama, to be exact — went on to hold the No. 1 spot in said rankings for all seven weeks in 2014.
The entire division went bowling last season, the first such occasion since the ACC Atlantic did it in 2008 — and the first time a seven-team division has done it.
Yet, the division's teams went 2-5 in bowl games last season and none have won a national title since Alabama in 2012, creating doubt about their perch at the top.
So is the postseason flame-out proof that the SEC West is overrated, or a byproduct of being too deep for its own good? The debate is the crux of ESPN writer Adam Rittenberg's Wednesday look at the division's reload for 2015, which you can read here:
SEC West hasn't lost its luster or bluster - SEC Blog - ESPN
To sum up what we already know: the West's last-place team (Arkansas) schoolyard-bullied Texas, which finished tied for third in the Big 12, for 60 laughable minutes in the Texas Bowl; Texas A&M and LSU both ranked in the nation's top 15 six weeks into the season before divisional cannibalism took over (and the Aggies beat another third-place Big 12 squad, West Virginia, by eight in the Liberty Bowl); usual punching bags MSU and Ole Miss both spent half the season in the top 10; the West sinks the most money into the best coaching; and six of the division's seven teams finished in the top 19 of the recruiting class rankings.
"The future for this division?" LSU's Jalen Mills is quoted as saying. "You're going to have the national champ come out of the SEC West. It's as simple as that."
It remains to be seen in 2015, but five SEC West teams made ESPN's post-spring top 25.
The two that didn't? Texas A&M (which has five-stars littering its offense and adds John Chavis to a Myles Garrett-led defense) and Mississippi State (which brings that Dak Prescott guy back from an Orange Bowl team).
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