2-time defending national champion Georgia picked to win SEC in preseason media poll

Georgia is the overwhelming favorite to win the SEC in 2023.

The back-to-back national champion Bulldogs received 181 of 291 votes to win the SEC in the league’s annual preseason media poll released Friday. Alabama got the second-most votes to win the conference at 62 while LSU got 31. No other team received more than five votes.

As you can imagine, Georgia was also the consensus pick to win the SEC East. The Bulldogs received 265 first-place votes; Tennessee got 14. The Volunteers were picked to finish second in the division ahead of South Carolina and Florida.

It was much closer in the West. Alabama got 165 votes and LSU got 117 to win the division. Texas A&M was picked to finish third in the West by a slight margin over Ole Miss. The Rebels were the only team in the West that did not receive a first-place vote.

Georgia beat LSU in the 2022 SEC title game after losing to Alabama in the 2021 title game. The last SEC title game that didn’t feature either Georgia or Alabama came in 2013 when Auburn beat Missouri.

There are always outlier votes in the SEC media poll, and this year you don’t have to look any further at the people who decided to back Vanderbilt. The Commodores are picked to finish last in the East but got eight votes to win the division. Five of those eight also picked Vanderbilt to win the SEC.

Vandy has not posted a winning season since James Franklin’s final season in 2013 and won five games from 2019-21 before going 5-7 in 2022. The Commodores have never played in the SEC title game, yet got as many votes to win the conference as Tennessee did and as many votes to win the league as Arkansas, Auburn and Texas A&M did combined.

Ole Miss, Florida and Missouri were the only three schools in the league to not receive votes to win their division or win the conference.