The Best SEC Teams, 1996-2007

So, Doug Segrest of The Birmingham News decided to play a simulation tourney, the SoS Playoffs II, to determine the best SEC teams of the last 12 years. Setting the tournament up like a mini World Cup tournament, he structured it as follows:

• Four groups of five teams each (20 teams total).
• Each group plays a home-home set against each opponent for a total of 8 eight each.
• The top two teams in each group advances to the quarterfinals.
• From there it is single elimination to the finals with each game played at a “neutral” site.

Each game is run using the NCAA Football SimMatchup tool at WhatIfSports. It is a fun little device. He takes the first outcome and then captures the box scores. It only goes back to 1996 in stats, thus the limitation in this bit of entertainment.

As a little disclaimer, I started this post about halfway through the Quarterfinals, so I had no idea of the results when I started.

Signing Day 2008

I hate signing day. Auburn almost always has a solid class, but not a top-tier class. The top 2 classes since 2002 came in 2002 and 2007, but not near our wonderful 2004 season. I always try to read things into the rankings that make me feel better. It isn’t helping much this year. Let’s take at look.

Auburn was ranked 20th by Rivals.com and 19th by ESPN. Even with a standard margin for error, that is pretty consistent. ESPN gave Auburn a B for a grade. However, that is FOURTH in the SEC West and Sixth in the SEC as a whole.