SEC West Dominance Hasn't Carried Over to Bowl Season

The best division in college football during the 2014 regular season has looked rather pedestrian since the schedule switched over to bowl time.

Mississippi State's 49-34 drubbing by Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl on Wednesday night followed up Ole Miss' listless effort in a 42-3 loss to TCU in the Peach Bowl earlier in the day, dropping the much-ballyhooed SEC West to 2-3 in bowl games. That's not good for any league; for a division that's had six different schools ranked in the top 10 at one point or another this season, that's horrible. Yahoo Sports' Pat Forde noted the division and the state's unfortunate events:

Meanwhile, the oft-overlooked SEC East is 2-0, with Florida, Missouri and Tennessee all with a good shot to win their upcoming games.

It seems like only yesterday we were wondering if the SEC could get two or three teams into the first four-team playoff, with no less than two coming from the West. All seven schools qualified for bowl games—the first time a division of that size has accomplished such a feat—yet heading into New Year's Day the wins have come from bottom feeders Arkansas and Texas A&M.

No pressure, Alabama and Auburn.

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Even as teams started picking each other off during conference play, leaving only Alabama in the playoffs but still taking up 25 percent of the New Year's Six bowl spots, the narrative remained the same: This division is so good, no one can stack up with it. The seven schools went a combined 28-0 in nonconference play (with wins over Boise State, Kansas State and Wisconsin) and 11-4 against the East Division.

Things started off well enough, with Arkansas destroying Texas in the Texas Bowl and A&M outlasting West Virginia in the Liberty Bowl. But then Notre Dame beat LSU in the Music City Bowl, throwing a huge log on to the "how would the Irish do in the SEC?" fire that seems to never burn out.

LSU had an up-and-down season, but Notre Dame was riding a four-game losing streak and shuffled quarterbacks more often than a shady dealer in a back-alley poker game.

Now we have the back-to-back letdowns by Ole Miss and Mississippi State, the teams that were at the center of the college football universe in October, yet they head into 2015 collectively having lost seven times in the past two months.

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This isn't meant to take anything away from TCU and Georgia Tech, teams who won 23 games and who both had breakout seasons, but at very few moments (before Wednesday) were either considered anywhere close to being on the level of the SEC West schools.

The most troubling trend noticed among the SEC losers has been their defense or lack thereof. Ole Miss was the FBS leader in scoring defense, at 13.8 points per game, and Mississippi State was 25th against the run before, according to cfbstats.com, Georgia Tech pounded out 452 yards on the ground Wednesday. LSU was a top-20 defense but couldn't force a takeaway against a turnover-prone opponent.

Coach Paul Johnson shared his thoughts after the game (via Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports):

Much can be salvaged by having Auburn take down Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl and having Alabama roll Ohio State and then either Florida State or Oregon for the national title, but for now all that talk of the SEC West taking over the world has been tempered.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.