SEC Media Days wrapped up on Thursday, which means prediction season has cranked up in full force. The conference announced its predicted order of finish on Friday as voted on by the credentialed members of the media at the four-day event in Atlanta earlier this week. Alabama and Georgia are predicted to meet in the SEC Championship Game on Dec. 3 in Atlanta for the second straight year, with the voters overwhelmingly pegging the Crimson Tide to win their third straight conference championship. Alabama received 158 first-place votes to Georgia's 18.
Texas A&M, one of the trendy picks to top Alabama in the SEC West, was picked second in the division with three first-place votes. On the other side of the division, Georgia was chosen overwhelmingly with 172 votes to win the East, with Kentucky grabbing four first-place votes and South Carolina getting three. Five teams in the East, including Vanderbilt, received a first-place vote.
The media poll has picked the correct conference champion in five of the last eight seasons. However, the media's overall performance hasn't been as successful. The correct champion has only been picked nine times in the last 30 years since the divisional split.
Here's a look at how the media sees the SEC shaking out in 2022:
| Team | First-place votes |
|---|---|
1. Alabama | 158 |
2. Georgia | 18 |
3. South Carolina | 3 |
4. Texas A&M | 1 |
5. Vanderbilt | 1 |
Here's the full breakdown of the predicted order of finish for each division. First-place votes are in parenthesis:
| East | West |
|---|---|
1. Georgia (172) | 1. Alabama (177) |
2. Kentucky (4) | 2. Texas A&M (3) |
3. Tennessee (1) | 3. Arkansas (1) |
4. Florida | 4. Ole Miss |
5. South Carolina (3) | 5. LSU |
6. Missouri | 6. Mississippi State |
7. Vanderbilt (1) | 7. Auburn |
