The SEC’s latest weekend only hardened the league’s reputation for pure mayhem, and Texas found itself right in the middle of it.
What happened across the conference on Oct. 17 was almost impossible to miss. Georgia, Alabama and Texas all lost in the same weekend for the first time since 1996, according to On Texas Football’s CJ Vogel.
Even more jarring, each of those defeats came against a lower-ranked or unranked opponent. Georgia, then No. 1, was upset at home by unranked Auburn.
Alabama, previously No. 6, was held scoreless in the second half against then-No. 14 Tennessee in Rocky Top.
And Texas, then No. 7, crumbled in Austin against an unranked Florida team that had dropped its previous two games.
A Sunday X post from ESPN’s Pete Thamel included a statement from a “veteran administrator” that captured the moment around those three programs.
“Two weeks ago Texas, Bama and Georgia were the three best teams in SEC, the conventional wisdom would have suspected that the only losses they might take is when they played one another,” Thamel’s post reads. “Since then they are a combined 1-5, and their only win in that group came because two of them played each other.”
That kind of volatility has been the story of this SEC season, and it has also spotlighted the early impact of new coaches. Auburn’s Alex Golesh and Florida’s Jon Sumrall are already steering their teams into the conversation with statement wins.
Kentucky has become another major piece of the puzzle. Under first-year head coach Will Stein, the Wildcats have emerged as one of the league’s biggest surprises.
They followed Oklahoma’s Red River Rivalry win over Texas by heading to Norman and knocking off the Sooners. Kentucky is now 6-1, ranked No. 12 in the country, and carrying a five-game winning streak into its home game against Vanderbilt.
Stein, though, is keeping the focus narrow.
“It’s another tough test this Saturday,” Stein said on Tuesday. “The SEC has no gimmies, and we got to continue to fight and continue to play well.”
The numbers underline just how scrambled the league has become. Last season, seven SEC teams finished with two or fewer losses in conference play.
This year, 12 of the 16 SEC teams already have two or more SEC losses entering Saturday. Georgia’s defeat also left the conference without an undefeated team.
That leaves the second half of the regular season wide open, with championship positioning still very much in play. The next few weeks should help separate the true contenders from the rest, but the overall picture is already clear: this league is as deep and chaotic as ever.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian put it plainly Monday.
“There’s a lot of football left to be played,” Sarkisian said. “There’s not a game on a Saturday in the SEC where any team can’t beat the other team.”
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Texas Fans Got Reassuring News About A Marquee Future Showdown
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The dates are already set for Sept. 9, 2028, in South Bend and Sept. 22, 2029, in Austin, giving Texas a marquee trip and a return game in front of its own fans. It also lines up with the Longhorns stated preference to keep valued nonconference dates on the calendar, the kind of matchups that can still carry real weight even in a sport where the postseason picture is getting larger and more forgiving. [Read more 🡒]