LSU Football: How SEC media predicting conference winner is officially a joke

LSU Football will not win the SEC West in 2021 according to the SEC media.

That’s a fair prediction. There’s no reason to predict anyone other than Alabama to win the SEC West.

LSU, according to the SEC media predictions that were revealed at SEC media days this past week, will finish No. 3 in the SEC West (they have Texas A&M finishing No. 2).

Again, this is fair. The Tigers are coming off a 5-5 season. They have a lot to prove in 2021.

Despite those “fair” predictions, I still have some major issues with the SEC media and their conference predictions this year.

The biggest issue with the SEC media predictions

I can’t take the SEC media conference predictions seriously anymore after this year. Enough is enough.

Here’s why:

LSU received one first-place vote. That makes perfect sense.

But guess who else received a first-place vote?

Arkansas and South Carolina — both of which were predicted to finish No. 6 in the SEC West and SEC East, respectively.

Why should we take conference predictions seriously when there are media members voting for Arkansas and South Carolina to win the conference?

No one who watches the SEC on a regular basis would ever vote for those two programs to win the SEC in 2021. Even casual viewers would know better than to pick Arkansas or South Carolina as the winner.

(Ole Miss also received a first-place vote, but that’s a bit more believable than Arkansas or South Carolina winning the SEC….it’s the Lane Kiffin effect.)

At this point, we might as well do away with this charade (the media members have only correctly predicted the winner of the SEC eight times since 1992, by the way).

When the SEC media starts taking these predictions seriously again, so will I. Until then, they’re null and void in my book.