Georgia's the pick again, but nobody's fully buying it

Every July it's the same ritual: SEC Media Days wraps up, ballots get tallied, and somebody gets anointed champion before a single snap. This year that somebody is Georgia again, with Pete Nakos flagging the result the moment it dropped.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Georgia picked to win SEC in 2026

The numbers back it up in a landslide. Georgia pulled in 88 of the 164 total votes cast, with Texas the clear runner-up at 57, setting up a potential rematch of the 2024 SEC Championship Game on December 5 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Ole Miss (6), Texas A&M (5), Alabama (3) and Oklahoma (2) rounded out the also-rans.

But polls like this always have a few voters who refuse to play along, and this year that honor goes to whoever's still riding for LSU and Kentucky. Brett McMurphy zoomed in on the outliers buried in the fine print.

Brett McMurphy

@Brett_McMurphy

LSU received 2 first place votes, Kentucky received 1

Two first-place votes for LSU isn't nothing — the Tigers finished with 2 total points to win it all in a poll where Georgia and Texas ate up 88% of the ballots between them. Kentucky's lone vote is the funnier story, a total outlier pick in a league where the Wildcats have never sniffed an SEC title. Somebody in that media room is either a die-hard homer or just likes chaos.

History says don't get too attached to any of this. The preseason media poll has only nailed the eventual SEC champion 10 times since 1992, which means Georgia being the pick is closer to a coin flip with extra steps than a sure thing. Kirby Smart's crew has the talent and the pedigree to justify the hype, but so did plenty of preseason favorites who didn't make it out of October.

Where this actually gets interesting is watching whether Georgia backs up the vote count on the field, or whether one of those rogue LSU and Kentucky ballots ages into the smartest take in the room by December.