POWER RANKINGS
Santa Claus usually fills stockings for the holidays. In the SEC, it’s shoes, as the Power Rankings reflect.
1. Alabama (10-0): In the Crimson Tide’s case, the footwear of choice at the end of the regular season: hobnailed boots. Not necessarily used for breaking noses, in Larry Munson’s famous but slightly grisly play call at Georgia, but definitely planted in the posterior of 10 opponents.
2. Texas A&M (7-1): Cowboy boots, of course, as the Aggies hope for just enough chaos to Texas two-step through the back door of the College Football Playoff honky-tonk.
3. Florida (8-2): It started so innocently. A football shoe in a player’s hand. Should he drop it or throw it 20 yards? The choice is to throw it and break the window into a 2020 college football alternate universe.
4.Georgia (7-2): A comfortable walking shoe. That’s for Kirby Smart as he takes a long walk to ponder what might have been had J.T. Daniels been available sooner.
5. Auburn (6-4): “Gus, we are going to give you a swift kick in the pants and boot you out the door. Also, you get $21 million.” “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
6. Ole Miss (4-4): The pair of red women’s shoes that was tossed onto the field at the end of the 2007 Alabama-Ole Miss game (yes, Ed Orgeron was involved in that one, too) didn’t alter any college playoffs but will always be iconic.
7. Missouri (5-4): Some bronze baby shoes (are those still a thing?) for Eli Drinkwitz, whose first steps into the SEC weren’t too shabby.
8. LSU (4-5): A million possibilities exist, but we will go with the shoe on the foot in my mouth after I pronounced that LSU had packed it in for the year.
9. Kentucky (4-6): Basketball sneakers, of course.
10. Arkansas (3-7): The Razorbacks did get a glimpse of the winged sandals of DeVonta Smith as he flew by, although it wasn’t nice to try and twist one off with the foot still attached.
11. Mississippi State (2-7): Some sturdy boots for a coach and a defense that stood firm when the season seemed headed down the pipes.
12. Tennessee (3-6): Will Phillip Fulmer’s size-12 coaching shoes go back into action once more when the season ends?
13. Vanderbilt (0-9): Sarah Fuller’s kicking shoe is on the way to the College Football Hall of Fame, a lone bright spot in a bad year in Nashville.
14: South Carolina (2-8): Will the glass slipper fit Shane Beamer in 2021? As for 2020, midnight has struck for the Power Rankings, at least until January 2021.