SEC Football: Predicting the 2023 SEC standings and final rankings

2023 is the last year that SEC Football will include an East and West division and the last year before major realignment shakes college football. Texas and Oklahoma will be joining the conference next fall, and the entire conference will compete in an 8-game schedule format that will send the top-2 teams in the league to Atlanta to play in the SEC Football Championship Game.

With 2023 being the final year of the conference format that has existed since 2012 (when the Missouri Tigers and Texas A&M Aggies joined the SEC) and it being the final year of the two-division format that has existed since 1992 (when the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Arkansas Razorbacks joined the league), there is special intrigue in how the year will play out.

The conference is strong in a difficult-to-project type of way in 2023 as all 14 teams in the conference have reason to believe they could go bowling this winter, and the top handful of teams have legitimate College Football Playoff aspirations in the final year of the 4-team format.

Predicting the league’s final standings is not easy to do in any preseason, but it is especially difficult in 2023.

The “middle class” of the SEC is extremely large in 2023. Only Vanderbilt should be viewed as a safe bet to not reach bowl eligibility (though, even the ‘Dores could reach 6 wins if all things go well in Nashville), and only Georgia, Alabama, and LSU should be considered safe bets to be “elite” in 2023.

So, what will the final 2023 SEC football standings look like after the regular season this fall?