During their bye week, the Tennessee Volunteers held steady in our SEC Power Rankings following Week 12 of the 2019 college football season.
The College Football Playoff picture got a bit more clear this past weekend, even if there was little movement in our SEC Power Rankings. However, that doesn’t mean that a lot of things did not happen in the league over the weekend.
Without Tennessee football playing, there was a ton of news. A horrible injury to one notable player led the way, but one team winning to stay alive in the playoff race, bringing the total number of league teams in the race to three, also was in the news.
It’s also worth noting that two teams were eliminated from bowl contention, one team failed to clinch a bowl berth, and now three 5-5 teams enter this weekend, including the Vols, with two of them playing each other. So our SEC Power Rankings are set to dramatically change again. One 4-6 team with a chance at a bowl also enters this weekend.
Simply put, there’s a lot of football left to be played. Now, the SEC East winner is written in stone, and the West winner is all but guaranteed. At this point, the SEC Championship is pretty much set barring a major upset. One coaching search is already underway. Another two are likely.
As we get set to break down the league this week, there remains a clear difference between the top and the bottom. In fact, the distance is the size of an ocean. The league, however, probably wishes there were roughly 10 games that didn’t happen this year, all of which were upsets or something that came down to a play or two.
If those upsets didn’t happen, we’d be talking about seven or eight top 25 teams, three potential College Football Playoff teams in the league and 12 potential bowl teams. But this is where the league is at. Let’s see how all the teams stack up against each other right now. These are our SEC Power Rankings following Week 12 of the 2019 season.