AUBURN, Ala. (AP) -Picture this scenario. A one-loss team from perhaps the strongest, most unforgiving division in college football gets shut out of the conference championship game because of a three-way tie.
The result: A potential national title contender gets no shot thanks to the unwritten rule that if you can’t win your division, you can’t be the BCS champ.
“It could definitely happen,” Auburn tight end Tommy Trott said.
Again. The Southeastern Conference Western Division is shaping up as potentially this year’s version of the Big 12 South, where Texas went 11-1 but lost the fifth tiebreaker with Oklahoma – BCS rankings – after both teams tied with Texas Tech in a head-to-head-to-head split. Oklahoma won the league and wound up losing to Florida in the BCS title game.
BCS standing is the No. 7 tiebreaker for three-team logjams in the SEC.
After all, three of major college football’s 13 unbeaten teams reside in the SEC West. No. 3 Alabama, No. 4 LSU and No. 17 Auburn are all 5-0.
A fourth team, No. 20 Mississippi, was ranked as high as No. 4 before losing to now 25th-ranked South Carolina.
M, a team from the Big 12 South.
And LSU hosts top-ranked Florida from the SEC East. In terms of winning the division and making the league championship game in Atlanta, that could have less of an impact than upcoming games with Auburn (Oct. 24), Alabama (Nov. 7) and Ole Miss (Nov. 21). Don’t you agree, coach Les Miles?
“There is a game after this?” Miles shot back. “The only thing that I’m focused on is this very next opponent.”
Then again, he did say “this division is as competitive as it has ever been.”
There is no shortage of potential pratfalls in the West. LSU barely survived a visit to Mississippi State two weeks ago, winning 30-26 with a goal line stand.
Auburn, picked to finish fifth in the division, is a minuscule two-point favorite over the Razorbacks.
. “It’s because you have these kind of games, and you probably will for the next three weeks. It’s just a tremendous league and every Saturday for the next 3-4 weeks or really the end of the year, a lot of things are going to be happening.”
Auburn coach Gene Chizik must feel as though he never left the Big 12. He watched from Iowa State and the North Division as Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma and their star quarterbacks jockeyed for position last season.
He said goodbye to the Longhorns’ Colt McCoy, but hello to his onetime backup Jevan Snead at Ole Miss.
There’s no Sam Bradford, but Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett is the nation’s No. 12 rated passer – and, incidentally, fifth in the league. Texas Tech’s fancy passing offense? Well, Chizik doesn’t have to face the one led by his own offensive mastermind, Gus Malzahn, but he still has to contend with former Auburn co-worker Bobby Petrino at Arkansas.
Auburn starter Chris Todd started his college career playing for Texas Tech’s Mike Leach.
“It’s unbelievable right now when you face these types of offenses,” Chizik said. “Just the explosive capabilities and scoring points. God, it’s tough. When you look at high-powered offenses throughout the country, it’d be hard to ignore the SEC.”
The Big 12 South had four teams in the AP Top 10 for several weeks in 2008. The SEC West had three of the top seven teams at one point.
For the players, the West supplies loads of challenges, some marquee games and chances to find out just how good their team really is.
“The fun thing is we all get to play each other,” Auburn’s Trott said. “It’s kind of worked out as an advantage to us. Coming in unranked in the preseason, we’re going to have to beat some teams to work our way up there.
“The fact that we get to play a No. 3 Alabama, a No. 4-ranked LSU … We’ve still got to go through Ole Miss. We’ve still got our work cut out for us. We look forward to it.”
Florida and LSU have proved the last three seasons that SEC teams don’t have to be perfect to win a national title, thanks to the league’s built-in proving grounds. Good thing, too.
“It’s very hard for any team to go undefeated in our league,” Nutt noted. “It’s just really difficult to do that.”
But what if, say, LSU beats Florida Saturday, then tops Auburn and loses to Alabama; and Auburn beats Alabama? Then, things get complicated.
Thankfully, the SEC coaches have more important things to worry about than the mathematics of a Big 12 South-like scenario or tiebreaker No. 7.
“That sort of a hypothetical situation, I have no idea about that,” Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. “I just know there’s a lot of quality teams in our league as well as in our division. To have several teams in the Top 10 and several others in the Top 20 and probably nobody in our division that couldn’t beat somebody they played really talks about the parity and the quality of the programs that we have.”
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AP Sports Writers Brett Martel in Baton Rouge, La., and Chris Talbott in Oxford, Miss., contributed to this report.
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