Another week, another unconventional preview to the college football weekend. Before we look forward to week 6, let’s look back at the results of the predictions in week 5. Auburn ran through the Bulldogs of Stark-Vegas quite literally (get well soon Jak the Bulldog mascot), Texas A&M won the Southwest Classic in Jerry’s World, Vanderbilt won their first game of the season against NIU, and The Ohio State shined on the big stage in Lincoln, Nebraska. If you’re following along every week then you’d know, that’s a 4-0 week for the stats and now 9-0 on the season.
Two perfect weeks to start the season, so let’s dive into some SEC games and see if the perfect season continues. This week we’ll be spanning from Columbia, Missouri as the 3rd best tigers in the SEC play host to Troy, the 3rd best team in Alabama, all the way to Gainesville, Florida to witness a College Gameday showdown between two top 10 SEC opponents. With that being said, let’s dive right in.
Troy at Missouri: Now usually we start with the Auburn game but since it’s the College Gameday game this week we will start with this match-up that still happens to feature a tiger team. These teams have played each other just 3 times with Missouri leading the series 2 games to 1 in the small sample series. Troy has a stunning 45-18-2 record when playing Tiger mascot teams which is a major advantage in this match-up; however, there is a detail to note about that stunning record. 40 of their 45 wins came against West Alabama, formerly known as Livingston Female Academy, which makes that record a little less impressive but those wins were against Tigers nonetheless.
That’s about all the things going Troy’s way in this match-up because the home team has won all three games and this game happens to be in Columbia, Missouri not Troy, Alabama. This game falls onto the SEC Network due to the lack of prestige but there’s still facts to digest from that fact. Missouri is a strong 8-2 in their last 10 SECNetwork games, but when you combine that with the fact that Troy has never won a game on the SECNetwork things tilt heavily into Missouri’s favor. Despite an impressive record vs Tigers, Troy’s good fortunes end there. Missouri wins.
Vandy at Ole Miss: Something I found out about this week, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt are considered rivals and have been playing each other almost every year since 1938. The rivalry started in 1894 when Vanderbilt beat the life out of the Rebels 40-0. Vandy went on to win 19 straight games with a 91-0 win in 1915, but Ole Miss also had a dominating run when they won 23 games of 25. So the rivalry started off with large streaks between both teams but lately it has been back and forth despite a couple of vacated wins due to Hugh Freeze and all that happened with him at Ole Miss.
Vanderbilt has to travel from their country music centrist city of Nashville to Oxford, Mississippi and that in itself shows some important stats. Vanderbilt has struggled the past 10 years when traveling west(the SEC West) and has a rough 3-7 record on the road against the 6 to, now, 7 teams in that side of the conference. Ole Miss plays host and doesn’t have any special home win streak or anything; however, the home team in this particular rivalry has a 4 game win streak. In this “I was this today years old when I learned about” rivalry series, the home team appears to have the nod with the Commodores struggling to anchor down in the west. Ole Miss takes the game.
The other SEC games are an embarrassing Tennessee team playing host to Georgia as red takes over their stadium and LSU hosting the Aggies, no not the somewhat good ones, of Utah State. Both match-ups shouldn’t be bearable to watch so there’s no point in dissecting them. Now that leaves us with only one more game, the main event as some would say. Without further ado The College Gameday featured match-up.
Auburn(7) at Florida(10): Auburn and Florida meet up for College Gameday for the third time ever. Florida has a solid 25-14 record while participating in Gameday but hold a strong 8-4 home record as well. Auburn has a mediocre 10-9 record on Gameday and despite this being their 20th time featured on the program, Auburn has only played 3 true road games prior to this Saturday on College Gameday with a 1-2 record. Auburn and Florida previously meet on College Gameday back in 1997 when the Gators came to the plains and won 24-10 and again in 2006 when Auburn avenged that home loss with a 27-17 win, also in Auburn. Both teams have played in a College Gameday game in a neutral site win as Florida beat Miami in Orlando and Auburn beat Oregon in Arlington. Moving on from the College Gameday aspect of the match-up, Auburn is a very impressive 7-2 in road games featuring two AP top 10 teams all-time. Gus Malzahn on Saturday will become just the 4th coach in Auburn’s history to coach his 86th game at Auburn University. The other 3 were Shug Jordan (first part of Auburn’s stadium name if you didn’t know), Pat Dye (the guy who the field is named after), and Tommy Tuberville (he beat Alabama 6 straight years) and they all won their 86th game.
Florida is hosting its homecoming this week as Auburn comes to town and last year it didn’t look pretty when a Tigers team came into the Swamp and throttled them on homecoming. Auburn and Florida have played a homecoming game against each other only once before this year. Auburn hosting Florida for homecoming back in 1957 when, like previously stated, Shug Jordan lead Auburn to a 13-0 victory and Auburn became eventual national champions that year. If anything we’ve learned from this, it’s gotta be that Auburn will win Gus his 86th game this weekend and potentially win the national championship? Auburn wins in the swamp.
The stats have been a crystal clear 9-0 in the 2 weeks I’ve written these articles and their feeling high on themselves. Will Troy, Vanderbilt or Florida be able to knock the unconventional stats of their grove? Or is it another perfect week?
