The polling is a sign of the times.
Missouri football has gone from being picked to finish sixth in the Southeastern Conference’s east division last year to a predicted landing spot of sixth in the entire 16-team league in 2024.
And even that upgrade might feel like a snub for a Mizzou team ready to push for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Ahead of the Tigers in the annual poll distributed to reporters at SEC media days are Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana State.
The Bulldogs received 165 of the 213 first-place votes, far ahead of the Longhorns, who had the next-highest tally at 27. MU didn’t receive any first-place votes, but Vanderbilt received two — an indicator, perhaps, of how unseriously some voters took their optional assignment.
The poll is a famously poor predictor of who will win the conference. In the last 32 seasons, the predicted champion won the SEC Championship Game only nine times.
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This year’s voting effort was additionally confusing, given that the SEC has not announced the expected eight levels of tiebreakers that will be used to separate teams with head-to-head records. Having 16 teams that play eight league games each means ties will be rather inevitable. Predicting Mizzou to finish with the exact same record as some of the teams just ahead of it in the preseason poll, like Ole Miss or LSU, seems reasonable. But because Missouri won’t play either this season, it’s not clear how they might land in the standings.
Tennessee narrowly trailed the Tigers in the predicted order of finish, followed by Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Auburn rounding out the top 10.
Predicted to land in the bottom part of the conference are Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.
Missouri is the only SEC team to play all of the bottom four teams in the predicted standings. The Tigers face three of them in the final three weeks, indicating one of the softest possible ways to close out the regular season.
The SEC ditched divisions when it added Texas and Oklahoma ahead of this season. Previously Mizzou had often been picked to finish sixth in the seven-team SEC East, including in 2013, 2016, 2020, 2022 and 2023. Its most favorable spots in preseason polls was third in that division, which came in both 2015 and 2019.
Wide receiver Luther Burden III is Missouri’s only representative on any of the three preseason All-SEC teams, earning a first-team distinction.
There were 11 MU players eligible for preseason all-conference teams, including Burden, quarterback Brady Cook, wide receiver Theo Wease Jr., tight end Brett Norfleet, offensive lineman Cam’Ron Johnson, offensive lineman Armand Membou, center Connor Tollison, defensive tackle Kristian Williams, linebacker Triston Newson, defensive back Daylan Carnell and defensive back Joseph Charleston.
That the Tigers only wound up with one player receiving the preseason honor is something of a surprise. The only teams with the same or fewer players on preseason All-SEC teams were Arkansas, which also had one selection, and Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, which both had zero.
Georgia had the most players land on one of the three all-conference teams, with 15. Alabama and Texas trailed with 14 and 13 respectively, followed by LSU with nine, Kentucky with seven, Ole Miss with six, South Carolina and Auburn with five, Florida with four, Oklahoma and Texas A&M with three and Tennessee with two.
Last year, Missouri had five players on preseason All-SEC teams.