Preseason SEC football poll

The SEC's spring football fling just ended, and here are some results. Sports information directors voted their choices for each division and for the conference overall. I've got to say, this is about the least imaginative preseason poll one could create.


Except for the odd but not surprising elevation of Tennessee to third in the East, that is almost exactly how the teams finished last season. Very creative, SIDs.


In the overall vote, it looks like Florida voted for Ole Miss, not Alabama, to win the Western Division. I wonder if that's because they actually think Ole Miss is the second-best team in the conference or simply the result of (entirely understandable) distaste for Alabama, Saban, or some combination thereof. It's also interesting to look at the differences in order when the divisional votes are together -- Tennessee loses the tie breaker with South Carolina, and Vanderbilt falls into a tie with Kentucky. Given that a school could not vote for itself, only one person out of eleven with the option to do so did not pick Mississippi State last. The poll is only more certain that Florida is first overall.

Last year, the only team to finish where predicted was Arkansas, barely, in a three-way tie for fourth in the Western Division.