Florida just clinched the SEC East again and will face Alabama in Atlanta
The Gators won a game that was relocated to LSU and shut down Tennessee’s hopes of stealing the division.
The SEC East is a debacle of biblical proportions. It’s the worst power conference division in college football for a second year in a row, sitting opposite the best. It has one apparently good team, one potentially OK team, and a smorgasbord of dead weight that includes both down powers and perennial bottom-feeders.
There’s good news, though: It’s almost over.
No. 23 Florida plays LSU on Saturday in Baton Rouge. If the Gators win, they’ll clinch the East in their final league game.
If they lose, there’s a pretty good chance they get caught by No. 19 Tennessee, which used to be the favorite before an epic meltdown in the middle of the conference schedule knocked it off course.
Here’s the relevant portion of the SEC standings, right now. Remember, each team plays an eight-game conference schedule:
Florida (5-2)
Tennessee (3-3)
Here’s how this can go from here:
1. Florida beats LSU on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, SEC Network), and the Gators play Bama in Atlanta for the second year in a row. That would give Florida six conference wins. Tennessee can only get five.
2. Florida loses to LSU, and suddenly, things start to look pretty good for Tennessee.
The Vols beat the Gators on Sept. 24, coming back from a huge first-half hole to snap an 11-game slide in their series. That means Tennessee has the head-to-head tiebreaker, and if Florida loses, that makes things awfully interesting.
Tennessee hosts Missouri this week (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS). Mizzou might be full of nice guys, but the Tigers are 3-7 and have just one SEC win.
The next week, Tennessee travels to Nashville to play Vanderbilt, the only team bad enough to lose to 2016 Mizzou in an SEC game.
S&P+ projections give Tennessee a 58 percent to close with two wins in a row. If Florida loses to LSU, the Vols doing so would punch their ticket to a rematch with the Tide.
Even if UF loses, the Vols are no sure thing to hold up their end.
Tennessee isn’t above losing to either Mizzou or Vandy. The Vols lost a few weeks ago to South Carolina, which is a touch better than expected but still in the early stages of a rebuilding job.
Florida’s game Saturday starts two-and-a-half hours before Tennessee’s.
By the time the Vols kick off against Mizzou, fans should have a sense of what’s at stake. The Florida result shouldn’t change players’ effort, but it might swing the atmosphere at Neyland Stadium between that of a party and that of a regular game.
