The SEC already has a crowded look in ESPN’s latest College Football Playoff bubble watch, and Heather Dinich’s latest rundown makes one thing clear: the league is loaded with teams still in the hunt.
Dinich put 12 SEC teams in the CFP conversation after Week 4, a remarkable number with the playoff still set at 12 teams for now. If the season ended today, she said the conference would land six bids, with Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Ole Miss and LSU filling those spots.
Florida’s win over Ole Miss gave the Gators a major boost in Dinich’s eyes. She wrote that the victory “skyrocketed the Gators into playoff contention,” pointing to the way they closed September with both the résumé and the eye test the committee tends to value.
Dinich also noted that, according to the Allstate Playoff Predictor, Florida has the 10th-best chance in the country to make the CFP at 48.9%. She added that even a 10-2 finish would still keep Florida in the mix.
Mississippi State was the other SEC team Dinich singled out most sharply, calling the Bulldogs the conference’s “enigma” heading into Week 5. The undefeated Bulldogs are No. 4 in ESPN’s strength of record metric after wins over Minnesota, South Carolina and Missouri, but the road ahead is much tougher.
Dinich pointed to upcoming games against Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma and Texas as the stretch that will define their season. She also said that if the Bulldogs keep winning, that regular-season in-state rivalry with Ole Miss will mean a lot more than bragging rights.
Mississippi State was Dinich’s only SEC team on the “wrong side of the bubble.”
She also placed Tennessee, Auburn, Missouri, Kentucky and Vanderbilt in her “hanging around” group, a reminder of how quickly the picture can change once conference play starts to chew through the calendar.
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