SEC WEST FOOTBALL TEAMS – BUY – SELL- OR HOLD?

By: Larry Burton

This is part two of a two part SEC football team article that evaluates which teams in each division would be a buy – sell – or hold if they were stocks. In other words, which team looks like a team to invest in, which you just hold on to a while and see a little more or which ones you dump.

This article finishes in the West where all the teams had really high highs and crushing lows last season. We’ll begin with the teams that finished at the bottom and end with the one that stood atop their division at regular season’s end.

Ole Miss –

The Rebels are usually one of the teams that are challenging for the SEC West lead, before this season they were on a two game winning streak over even Alabama. But if you bought or held Ole Miss going into this season, you lost your butt with this season’s crash. They were the only SEC West team not to make a bowl game.

Finishing at the bottom of the SEC West may not be the worst thing for the Rebels. They’re still waiting to see what the NCAA will do them over violations and the fallout from them. Hugh Freeze may lose his job plus they’ve already lost their quarterback, Chad Kelly, who after a season ending injury didn’t look too impressive without him.

So if you haven’t already between all these lines, do not buy Ole Miss under any condition and if you still have stock in them sell, sell, sell. This past season’s 5-7 year may be the new norm.

 Mississippi State –

If you sold your stock after the departure of Dak Prescott like a prudent investor, you did well. Through a technicality, the Bulldogs did make a bowl game and even a bowl win, but that just got them to 6-7.

They ended the season strong however, with wins in the bowl game and rival Ole Miss and Mullen had a pretty good recruiting class coming in including a nice 4 star linebacker, Willie Gay. But what might help them more in the short term was the signing of 9 JUCO players who can come in and provide some help right away.

If the offense gets going and Mullen usually does develop a quarterback, then new hire defensive coordinator Todd Grantham could be the key to help turn around the Bulldogs. Mississippi State stock is low right now with an interesting future, so it’s worth buying.

Arkansas –

Every season folks expect the Hogs to take that next step and every year they don’t. The Brett Bielema era is a 19-20 record in four seasons. The last few seasons have had teams that looked outstanding at times and stunk up stadiums on others. They are just a difficult team to get a handle on.

Sooner or later the Hogs are going to come through or Bielema will be coaching elsewhere. If they let him stay long enough, this season’s signing class will certainly help. He had a great class that included the number one JUCO tight end, Jeremy Patton and the number one JUCO wide receiver Brandon Martin. Bielema also got a top cornerback to flip from Texas.

Arkansas fans buy into the hype every season, only to be disappointed and lose their savings, but this season if they’ll just hold those shares, they could pay off in a season or two. Who knows, they could even get a mild bump up from last season’s 7-6 record for a small payoff this upcoming season.

Texas A&M – 

Kevin Sumlin is on the hotseat. Since starting red hot with 11 wins in his first season with the Aggies in 2012, his win total started downhill since then with his win totals per season dropping to 9 in 2013 and just 8 wins in each of the last three seasons. This is the same kind of results that got Mark Richt fired from Georgia.

The Aggies have had some off the field issues including transferred quarterbacks, but Sumlin is hoping that he’ll soon have some help from signing the nation’s No. 2 dual-threat passer, Kellen Mond, who enrolled early to do the offseason work and get ready. He also got a good linebacker who could turn into a great one and that’s something he’s been missing in past seasons.

But now it comes to the question of whether Sumlin improves from his 8 win total and the answer is no. So hold your stock. There could be mild dip this season, but if that quarterback is the real deal things should hold this season.

LSU – 

An 8-4 season got Les Miles fired as the Tigers were supposed to rival Alabama for the top spot last season and they didn’t hire Ed Orgeron to give them any more 8-4 seasons. Yes, Orgeron is on the hotseat from his first season and even before the season started, that heat got hotter as Orgeron had his state of Louisiana pilfered by other schools, especially Alabama, for its top recruits.

That’s not to say he didn’t get a good class however, he did in fact get a top 10 class including 15 of the top 300 players in the nation. But the best thing he got was the thing that LSU needed most, not one good quarterback, but two. Both are good ones that could press Danny Etling right away for the QB job. Myles Brennan is the nation’s No. 4 pocket passer and Lowell Narcisse is the country’s No. 5 dual-threat quarterback.

The defense always seems to be good at LSU and if quarterback play picks up as hoped, it would be worth the gamble to buy LSU or if you bought last season, just hold on and take your losses for last season and like the rest of us, enjoy watching how it all plays out.

Auburn – 

Folks who had held on to their Auburn buy from last season were ecstatic over how it appeared the season was going to go. They played eventual championship winner Clemson to a close hard fought loss and lost another game to Texas A&M before getting red hot and looking like a contending team.

And then the wheels fell off the Gus Bus. They lost a game to Georgia because they couldn’t score more than 7 points and ended the year by totally getting thumped by Alabama and Oklahoma. Like LSU, Auburn had a decent defense by spotty quarterback play cost them any chance of contending and made them one of three 8 win teams in the SEC West.

And while Auburn had a great top 10 recruiting class and some good help in a lot of areas, none may make more impact than landing Baylor transfer quarterback Jarrett Stidham, who may do more than just challenge for the starting job at Auburn, he could land it and be a real star there.

Now for the result? Folks should hold their stock and not get too excited just yet. While it’s possible that Auburn could have a small gain to a 9 win season, but it isn’t worth the risk in buying it given the schedule they have to face, so for now hold what you have.

Alabama – 

Boy, does Nick Saban pay dividends. Even with last season’s last second loss that cost the Crimson Tide yet another national championship, folks who bought Alabama have done very well over the years.

Alabama had the nation’s best recruiting class yet again and once again Alabama appears to be able to hug and say goodbye to some of the nation’s best players and replace them with the coming year’s best new players. There are just too many list, but the most interesting one is an incoming quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, the nation’s top quarterback. He may actually push and beat the quarterback who led Alabama to and almost won a national championship, Jalen Hurts. I can’t find where such a thing has ever happened before, so that will be interesting to watch.

The team is stocked to the breaking point at every position with top quality big time players except for the cornerback position and the schedule is one that favors Alabama to make it back to the playoffs once again.

Some say it’s silly to buy when the price is as high as Alabama is right now, but this Tide is still rising so buy and buy big.

That’s it for the SEC West. If you missed part one on the SEC East, read it here.

Larry has been published in almost every media outlet for college sports and now primarily writes here for Touchdown Alabama. Follow Larry on Twitter for inside thoughts and game time comments at https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter

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