Will We Finally Know Who Is the SEC's Best Team After Week 6?
The standings won't reflect it since at least two and possibly more SEC teams will still be undefeated after this week, but we will know which team is the SEC's best following this weekend.
With No. 12 Mississippi State (4-0, 1-0 SEC) hosting No. 6 Texas A&M (5-0, 2-0 SEC), No. 11 Ole Miss (4-0, 1-0 SEC) hosting No. 3 Alabama (4-0, 1-0 SEC) and No. 15 LSU (4-1, 0-1 SEC) traveling to No. 5 Auburn (4-0, 1-0 SEC), Week 6 will serve as a "separation Saturday" for six of the seven SEC West teams.
Yes, that's a cheesy moniker that has been recycled just about every college football season at some point. This week, though, it's accurate.
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We won't know who the eventual champions are after this week, but we'll certainly know the front-runners.
While ESPN's College GameDay heads to Oxford, Mississippi, for the first time ever and SEC Network's SEC Nation lands about 100 miles southeast in Starkville, the biggest game of the weekend will take place in Auburn.
This is an elimination game for LSU.
With one conference loss on the resume, head coach Les Miles' Tigers aren't likely to make it to Atlanta as SEC West champions with two conference losses considering the strength within the division this year. Miles is downplaying the importance of this game.
He's going to have to string together not just positive outings, but wins. Otherwise, the six-team race for the SEC West title will be diminished to five before the Bengal Tigers walk off the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
If Auburn drops that game, the cannibalization of the SEC West will be on in full force, and we could be looking at a giant mess in November.
That's not to say that Auburn still couldn't win it. It dropped this game to LSU last year and could certainly repeat the feat. One loss, coupled with what's going to be two more from teams playing games in the state of Mississippi on Saturday, will create a logjam in the nation's toughest football division.
Record-wise, there will be some separation. From the eye test, though, there will be plenty.
If Alabama's offense lights up Ole Miss' stout defense on the road, it'll be hard to argue that the Crimson Tide isn't the best team in the SEC—and possibly even the nation. Regardless of what happens in Starkville between Texas A&M and Mississippi State, that'll give the Crimson Tide bullet points on its resume that no team in the SEC can boast.
| 1 | Texas A&M | 2-0 | 5-0 |
| 2 | Alabama | 1-0 | 4-0 |
| 3 | Mississippi State | 1-0 | 4-0 |
| 4 | Auburn | 1-0 | 4-0 |
| 5 | Ole Miss | 1-0 | 4-0 |
| 6 | LSU | 0-1 | 4-1 |
| 7 | Arkansas | 0-2 | 3-2 |
It's a bit premature to worry about the standings right now, though.
"We haven't lost a game yet, so we're going to go into every game and try to win it," Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze said in his weekly press conference. "As soon as we walk out onto the field, we're trying to get a victory. We haven't talked about [the division]. All we're talking about is trying to win this game."
This is the weekend that will set up the next two months of college football in the South, though.
We'll know the contenders, and we'll know the pretenders, with several teams fighting uphill battles instead of fending off upset-minded foes.
Get ready.
Barrett Sallee is the Lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of CFBStats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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