Last year, the Alabama Crimson Tide were a strong unit in the SEC, but the expectation in the conference championship NCAAF betting odds was that other teams like Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Auburn would beat ‘Bama to the title. Everything actually looked to be on course for a title-less year for Alabama by October 2014, when the first College Football Playoff rankings were released looking like this: 1. Mississippi State 2. Florida State 3. Auburn 4. Ole Miss 5. Oregon 6. Alabama.
However, by the end of the season, the SEC and national landscape changed and looked very different, with Alabama rising atop the conference and securing a slot in the inaugural four-team college football playoff as the top-seeded team in the nation. The rest of the so-called SEC football powerhouses could only settle for bowl games. And not that they did any good in those bowl games, as Ole Miss suffered a humiliating 42-3 loss to TCU in the Peach Bowl, Mississippi could not match Georgia Tech offense and lost the Orange Bowl 49-34, and Auburn lost to Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl despite the Badgers coming off a blanked out 59-0 loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. Of course, Alabama also didn’t do much with its No. 1 seed, getting annihilated by the Buckeyes in the playoffs.
So in short, 2014 was a disappointing year for the SEC as a conference in the national platform. Nonetheless, at least Alabama can celebrate the fact that the team hoisted the SEC Conference title, when it didn’t look like they’d do so, as of October.
Only 57 Days until kickoff! Are you all ready? #Bama #CrimsonTide #RollTide pic.twitter.com/2bG7RYdDcD
— AskTide (@Ask_Tide) July 9, 2015
Focusing ahead, the look of things in the 2015 college football odds indicate that Nick Saban and his team will be solid contenders for the Conference title once again in 2015, as has been the case in the recent years. But outside ‘Bama and the LSU Tigers, two of the most successful programs in the SEC conference over the last 10 years, there are other teams in the SEC that have been on the come-up, showing signs of being able to offer strong contention for the conference title. It is these other teams that we will be briefly focusing on in the section below.