Through 11 SEC regular season games the Florida Gators sit third in the SEC at 8-3, trailing one of the preseason favorites, Alabama, and 2024-25’s powerhouse Auburn who both sit at 10-1.
On paper it looks like a given that one of the Tigers or Crimson Tide will win the SEC’s regular season. For a while Auburn was (deservedly) penciled in to be the projected winner–that was, of course, until Florida was able to knock them off for their first and only loss in league play so far.
While Auburn and Alabama remain in the driver’s seat to win the SEC regular season there is a clear path to Florida remaining in the mix, even though it isn’t something that has been regularly talked about. The first thing to keep in mind with this discussion is that the SEC does not have a “balanced schedule” or anything close to it now that it has 18 teams. A “balanced schedule” refers to a schedule in which every team plays every league opponent both at home and away–a luxury that was provided back in the days of 10 or so teams in each league, but one that was out the window when the SEC expanded. Now that the league is 16 teams there starts to be a greater divide in quality from the best team to the worst, and that makes schedules entirely unequal. Something fans of SEC teams will have to get used to is that a 16 team league is going to make for schedules that differ wildly in terms of difficulty and oftentimes, if not every year, the standings aren’t going to reflect the best teams in order of 1 to 16, and instead will be heavily impacted from the difficulty of the schedule.
Going into the 2025 SEC season, Florida caught a break with one of if not the easiest schedule of anyone in the SEC. Just before SEC play started writer Ben Brandon objectively studied the SEC strength of schedule using team evaluations from the NET, KenPom, HaslaMetrics, Torvik and EvanMiya in order to gauge schedules and came away with this order with 1 being the most difficult schedule and 16 being the easiest:
1. South Carolina
- Ole Miss
3. Kentucky - Texas
- LSU
- Alabama
- Auburn
- Vanderbilt
- Georgia
- Tennessee
- Oklahoma
- Texas A&M
- Arkansas
- Missouri
- Mississippi State
- Florida
Regular Gator Country readers will remember that from the time the SEC schedule was announced that I thought the Gators caught a break in terms of having one of the easiest SEC schedules and Ben Brandon’s work supported this with numbers, and when you start to see who has had strong or weak seasons so far and go back to this data you can start to see why some teams had uncharacteristic losing streaks (such as Kentucky) and other teams were able to rattle off a bunch of wins despite struggling against anyone at the top of the league (Mississippi State).
There is no question that Florida’s 8-3 record is in some ways helped by the easier schedule, but that’s out of the Gators’ hands and they can only play who is put in front of them by the league. Now, let’s start looping back to how Florida might have a chance at winning the SEC regular season.
Torvik (or BartTorvik) has a great tool that evaluates remaining strength of schedule.
Auburn, currently first in the SEC due to having the tiebreak, has the 4th hardest remaining SEC schedule.
Alabama, currently tied in record with Auburn but second in the SEC due to losing the tiebreak, has the number 1 hardest remaining schedule.
Florida, on the other hand–has the 16th remaining strength of schedule remaining. That’s right–it’s the easiest, and looking at each schedule you could argue it’s the easiest by a large margin. Of course, it’s all relative and that’s the “easiest” remaining schedule in what’s won of if not the hardest leagues ever–but relative to Alabama and Auburn the Gators have the chance to stack wins.
In the next four games Florida plays South Carolina, Oklahoma, LSU, and Georgia. That group literally makes up the 13th-16th rankings in the SEC–the worst teams in the league. Florida then has a challenging game with Texas A&M who is 4th in the SEC and a team that the Gators will have to hold off.
Importantly–Florida will then play against Alabama. This game is important because it’s a chance to gain considerable ground on an opponent ahead of them in the standings, so this game will have double the importance of anything left on Florida’s regular season schedule.
Auburn, with the 4th most difficult SEC schedule remaining, still has to play Texas A&M, Kentucky, and Ole Miss as some of their most notable games (but not the most notable–more on that in a moment).
Alabama, with what is by far the hardest SEC schedule remaining, still has to play Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi State, and Florida–so they don’t have a game left against anyone below 31st in KenPom.
Here is the most important part of both Auburn and Alabama’s remaining schedule–they have to play each other twice as regional rivals. For Florida, nothing could be better than the two teams ahead of them having to play not only once, but twice. If they split these games then Florida will have made up considerable group on the teams they are chasing. If one team sweeps that probably means they are winning the league, but it means they are likely dropping the losing team to third with Florida being able to take second place. This is just another way that the schedule is breaking well for Florida–and you can really start to see a path, while still unlikely, that the Gators could win the league.
- Realistically, the Gators could only lose one more game and it can’t come to Alabama, though perhaps more realistically they’ll have to win every game remaining. They will be favored in every game remaining except for Alabama (per KenPom).
- They’ll need Auburn and Alabama to split their series to give each a loss.
- Alabama would need to drop a game to Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, or Mississippi State which is likely–that’s a tough stretch. In this hypothetical scenario Florida would beat Alabama head to head giving them the tiebreak.
- Auburn would need to drop a game to probably one of Kentucky or Ole Miss, but ideally not Texas A&M who is in somewhat of a similar situation to Florida.
The Gators already beating Auburn to have the tiebreaker is huge, and a big reason why this outside chance to win the league exists. It’s still unlikely that the Gators could win the SEC but there is a chance which is something that is remarkable to say in one of the most challenging SEC iterations that has ever existed. The easiest schedule has certainly played a big role in this, but no one looks back on SEC banners and thinks to themselves about the strength of schedule of the champion.