clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

So I Guess We're Back to Square One ... Right? Florida 34, Georgia 31 (OT)

Another game, but little more clarity in the race for the SEC East.
Another game, but little more clarity in the race for the SEC East.

In an ideal world, each week of the college football season is supposed to give us a little more data and make things a bit clearer as we move toward the bowl season. Of course, this year has been far from ideal for the SEC East, and little of what has happened this week has made anything much clearer.

There was South Carolina's 38-24 win against Tennessee, but the Gamecocks have often struggled with the Vols. No, the game that would tell us the most about the race for the East was the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, which would provide a great deal of clarity.

About the only thing it cleared up is making a fact out of something that we all kind of thought a few weeks ago: Georgia will not win the SEC East. This was an elimination game, and Georgia lost, so logic tells you that the Dawgs have now been eliminated from their unlikely quest for the division title.

But not without making things more interesting than they should have been for the Gators. After all, Florida led 21-7 at the half. By the time the fourth quarter was almost over, that had changed rather dramatically. Georgia had gone on a 17-3 run and tied things up on a two-point conversion run by Aaron Murray. And the Dawgs kept going, answering the subsequent Florida touchdown with seven points of their own.

Then came overtime, when Aaron Murray's pass was picked off by Will Hill -- 89 yards later, Hill was short of a game winning touchdown, but it gave Florida the opportunity for the Chas Henry field goal that won the game.

Which is all that Florida really needed out of this game. Barring an unlikely loss to Vanderbilt next week paired with a South Carolina win against Arkansas, the battle between Steve Spurrier's alma mater and his new team in the Swamp in two weeks will decide the SEC East. It hasn't always been a thing of beauty, but Florida remains in control of its own destiny as it looks for a third straight division championship.

For Georgia, the narrative of the season seems to change with every game. The Dawgs remain two games away from a bowl berth with two winnable games left on the schedule. But Georgia has already lost some winnable games this year, and this season has proven that nothing is certain about the Dawgs no matter how much new information we have.