NCAAF - SEC Bets - Week 11

11/6/2023

There were some excellent football games in Week 10, and we have a clearer picture of the potential SEC championship contestants after the eight games last Saturday. I'll recap some of the bigger storylines from the week that was in the Southeastern Conference.

Georgia beat Missouri in a tighter game than a lot of people expected, and they now just have to win either of their final two SEC matchups to advance to the championship game yet again.

In the West, Alabama all but secured their SEC title appearance by beating LSU at home in a game that was on track to be an all-time classic until Bama knocked Jayden Daniels out of the game in the fourth quarter. I'll be talking a little more about this game later, but Bama just needs to beat either Kentucky or Auburn in the next two weeks to lock up their division.

Ole Miss fended off Texas A&M to keep their wildly outside College Football Playoff hopes alive, but a lot of chaos would have to ensue for that to materialize. On the other hand, A&M continues to lose close games and Jimbo Fisher's seat gets hotter and hotter by the week.

Arkansas finally put together an offensive performance that it feels like should have been occurring on a weekly basis for the Razorbacks. Florida couldn't stop KJ Jefferson on the ground, and Arkansas managed to pull off an overtime victory for the program's first ever win in the Swamp. The Gators are down bad and you have to think Billy Napier's leash will be very short if he's given another year to try to turn things around in Gainesville.

We all knew it would likely be the case, but how bad does Tennessee's loss to Florida early in the season look now? I have no idea what it is, but the Vols just can't win in the Swamp even when every other team in the SEC seems to be able to. Florida may end up with their third straight losing season for the first time since just after World War 2 ended, and they still managed to beat Tennessee in both of those seasons where they hosted the game. The Vols looked good in their 59-3 win over UConn last week, but they'll face a much tougher test on the road at Missouri this week.

Real quick, I have to give props to Kentucky for bouncing back from their loss to Tennessee to thwart Mississippi State in Starkville. I also have to point out that South Carolina's program is seemingly in shambles when Shane Beamer steps up to the mic postgame to announce that the team was throwing a fiesta in the locker room after barely holding on to beat Jacksonville State.

I want to talk about Alabama for a minute before we get into the BSSR Betting Challenge update and a look ahead to the upcoming week's games.

I want to preface this by saying the BSSR is always unbiased in our journalism and predictions. The SEC has to do something about the officiating that occurs in Bryant-Denny Stadium. The way the referees seemingly control every game in Alabama's favor makes the games unwatchable. We saw horse collar tackles from both teams that only got called on LSU. Pass interferences and defensive holds are called only in the biggest moments and in Alabama's favor. Bama's O-line can put pass rushers in chokeholds and get away with it.

The way majority of Alabama's home games are called compromise the integrity of the SEC and not enough people are talking about it. Or at least, not enough people in power are saying anything about it. It's atrocious and needs to be fixed, otherwise I'm going to stop getting excited for any big games played in Tuscaloosa. I want to do a full deep dive into the penalty situation over the last several years and see if this is just a made up sentiment that a lot of non-Alabama fans possess, or if there is truth in the numbers showing the Crimson Tide are benefitting from lop-sided whistles. I'll definitely post about it if I do the analysis.

All that being said, here are the two sets of updated SEC rankings provided by Ryne and myself:

There was slight movement in the bottom half of my rankings, largely to account for the Arkansas/Florida and Kentucky/Mississippi State outcomes. Ryne adjusted his 2-6 spots, moved Arkansas up by quite a bit from their win at Florida, and bumped South Carolina down further after their performance against Jacksonville State.

I had the best week in the BSSR Betting Challenge to move into a tie for 2nd place overall with Alex. A slightly down week from Micah allowed Ryne to take the lead in the over/under category, while Micah still holds a slight lead on Alex and myself on money line and against the spread bets, respectively.

We're down to three weeks remaining in the regular season for someone to make a late push to challenge Micah. We'll see if the SEC Championship game will be the deciding factor like it was a couple years ago.

We have seven games to pick for Week 11, with two of the games potentially determining the SEC Championship representative from the East. If Tennessee beats Missouri at 3:30, that will put the pressure on Georgia to defeat Ole Miss later that night. If Ole Miss is able to pull off the upset, then the Bulldogs will travel to Knoxville next week to fight for that title game spot.

Outside of Tennessee at Missouri and Auburn at Arkansas, which will likely be tight games, every other game this week features a double digit favorite. We'll see how both the games themselves, and our betting challenge plays out as we enter the home stretch of the regular season.

#8 Alabama at Kentucky (ALA -10.5, O/U 47.5)