Topics for Discussion: The SEC Championship Game and What's Become of Alabama

Let's do this: The SEC Championship Game. So who you got? The Auburn team that had one of the worst seasons in team history last year before running off an 11-1 record and taking down the reigning national champions in a wild finale? Or the Missouri team that has finally silenced the doubters by winning a division and boasts its own 11-1 mark? Can the Tigers slow down the Tigers, or do the Tigers just have too much firepower for the Tigers to overcome?

Does the winner of that game get a ticket to the BCS Championship Game regardless of what happens? Let's be bluntly honest here: It's going to be very hard for a one-loss team of any sort to pass an undefeated Ohio State team. Why? Because voters look at an undefeated team as deserving of special treatment, and while that's true to some extent, the coaches and the Harris Poll panel are going to take things too far. Count on it. Also, Ohio State was ahead of Auburn before Saturday, and many folks are going to mindlessly move both teams up without re-evaluating the order. Is that fair? Should a one-loss SEC champ get by Ohio State and into the title bout? And whatever the merits, does the SEC winner need a win by Sparty or Duke to get to Pasadena?

What do we make of this Alabama team? You can "what-if" Saturday's gut-punch loss to death, but the fact of the mater is that the Tide remains an 11-1 team that is probably bound for the BCS and came just a few plays away from heading to Atlanta with a chance to play for a third straight national title. So is it really fair to call that a failure or a disappointment? Is the bar for Alabama really that high now? And was the Tide really an unstoppable juggernaut this year, or did we all just fall for the name on the front of the jersey?

What was your favorite memory of the SEC football regular season in 2013? It's almost hard to remember it all or to believe that it's over now, but this is a season that includes the discussion of Jadeveon Clowney's condition program, "the Prayer in Jordan-Hare," the Grim Reaper's path of destruction in the SEC East, the Missouri-S.C. game, the Iron Bowl denouement and the complete implosion of Florida, to name a few. Or pick your own.

You're the mushy middle of the bowl order in the SEC: What do you do? These are the games that are one tier under the BCS but one tier over the Gator and Liberty bowls of the world. So if you're the Capital One, Outback, Cotton and Chick-fil-A bowls, who do you take when the season is over? And why?