To say the SEC East has been wild is something like saying Amanda Bynes has been weird. There have been surprising teams (Missouri), shocking losses (UGA to Vanderbilt and South Carolina to Tennessee) and all around hilarity (did you see the world's largest outdoor cocktail party? Where the happenings on the field certainly lived up to the game's moniker?).
As far as figuring out how this could all play out, there hasn't been a whole lot of clarity. The various options that could happen seem to be confusing enough, let alone to get an intuitive grasp on how likely any of them in particular are. However, not that many games remain for the teams involved, so it is actually possible to get an idea of what can happen, who is in the best shape and how likely any given outcome is.
The only SEC games that remain for the teams involved are Florida at South Carolina, Missouri at Kentucky, Missouri at Ole Miss, Texas A&M at Missouri, Kentucky at Georgia, and Georgia at Auburn.
This season, Kentucky has been extremely inept, still winless in the SEC, and only two wins overall, versus Miami of Ohio and Alabama... State. That makes things a bit clearer, as we can ring up near certain losses v Missouri (I gave Missouri a 90% chance of winning this game, it is on the road after all) and Georgia (I gave UGA a 95% chance of winning this game, anything can happen, hence the 5%, but it's extremely unlikely).
This means there are only 4 real games that would majorly swing this race remaining, I'll deal with them in turn:
1) Florida at South Carolina (75% chance South Carolina wins)
This is a rivalry game, though not on the level of Florida v Georgia. Most anything can happen, but Florida is banged up, hilariously inept at times on offense, and has a reeling defense. And they're going on the road to Columbia, SC, where the Gamecocks haven't lost since 2011. I gave South Carolina a 75% chance of winning this game. Florida has a lot of talent, but South Carolina will likely have more talent that is better coached and at home. It's not a game South Carolina can take for granted, but it is one they should certainly win, especially coming off a bye week.
2) Georgia at Auburn (40% chance Georgia wins)
Auburn has been the surprise team out of the SEC West, with just a road loss to LSU sullying their schedule and impressive road win over Texas A&M. The South's oldest rivalry is going to be HUGE for both teams, as a UGA loss severely impacts their chances, and Auburn would be playing for a chance to take the SEC West with a win in the Iron Bowl. Given the way the two teams have played, and the quality of their wins (and in Auburn's case comparative lack of losses, let alone bad losses), giving Georgia a 40% chance here might even be generous.
3) Missouri at Ole Miss (50% chance Missouri wins)
Look at Ole Miss's schedule. They don't have a bad loss, losing to Alabama, Texas A&M by just three and on the road at Auburn by just eight. Add in a three touchdown victory over Texas on the road and a victory against LSU and you see what is a very under the radar, very good team. Ole Miss has been very tough in the land of Hotty Toddy, and I don't see this being anything other than a coin flip game for Missouri, and that might be generous.
4) Texas A&M at Missouri (30% chance Missouri wins)
Missouri gets TAMU at home, but TAMU is still TAMU, and they still have perhaps the single most valuable player in college football in Johnny Football. TAMU has had some slip ups, but they're probably still a better team than Missouri at this point. Further, Missouri's home field advantage isn't really on par with South Carolina and Georgia, so they don't get as much of a home field advantage bump as either of those two might in this situation.
Given those games (plus the two games against Kentucky), let's look at how it all plays out:
Chances of winning the SEC East outright:
South Carolina: 19%
Missouri: 21%
Georgia: 4%
As we can see, the chance that we get an outright winner of the division is under 50%. Meaning more likely than not, we'll see some sort of tie break scenario come into play. UGA is hurt by having more losses than Missouri already, and a tougher schedule with more games to play than South Carolina.
Two team tie scenarios:
Georgia/Missouri tie (Missouri wins by virtue of head to head win): 4%
This outcome is pretty unlikely because it not only involves UGA and Missouri ending with the same number of SEC losses, but also South Carolina not having that same number. When you multiply all those things out, it ends up being pretty unlikely, which means that Missouri's win over UGA doesn't mean as much as it might have.
Georgia/South Carolina tie (UGA wins by virtue of head to head win): 12%
This is a somewhat unlikely outcome, but not totally unreasonable either. It's more likely than the above scenario because while USC can only have two or three SEC losses, Missouri can have 1, 2, 3 or even 4. Meaning it's more likely that Missouri doesn't send this back to a three way tie.
USC/Missouri tie (USC wins by virtue of head to head win): 22%
As we see, as two team tie between the Tigers and Gamecocks is among the more likely of the specific outcomes, making South Carolina's road victory over Missouri huge. Given the games Missouri has left to play, their most likely outcome is having two SEC losses (46% according to the outcomes of the games above), combining this with the chances that UGA loses on the road at Auburn and USC beats Florida at home, and we see just how big Connor Shaw's 4th quarter come back could be.
Three way tie scenarios:
Missouri has fewer SEC East losses (Missouri wins): 13%
Because the three teams beat each other circularly, the first tie breaker in a three way tie would be who has the best record in the SEC East. Since Missouri's two toughest games remaining are against the SEC West, not the East, this is something that could heavily play in their favor.
Pandemonium (AKA would involve all sorts of games that aren't the three listed teams, and maybe even BCS rankings): 6%
This is the case where a 3 way tie happens and the teams involved have the same SEC East records. Because this case would involve so much that we can't really know at this point, or even really speculate about without going into crazy amounts of math, I just simply divided the likelihood of this one up by three for each of the teams. It's a small amount anyway, and wouldn't swing any of the numbers by any dramatic amount. But knowing the SEC East this year, the least likely, most confusing outcome could well happen.
What it all means
I finally added up all these scenarios' probability for each team (except the pandemonium scenario, which I gave each team an equal share, 2%, for the possibility of that scenario), to get an idea of how likely each team is to win the SEC East:
South Carolina: 42%
Missouri: 40%
Georgia: 18%
As we see, this basically means that Missouri and South Carolina are both about dead even, and both are about twice as likely to win as Georgia. This makes some intuitive sense, as while Missouri has the fewest losses, they also have a difficult schedule with a lot of remaining games. South Carolina has one more loss, but only has one more game, that they should win. Georgia is in the unfortunate position of being behind in both losses and also not having a particularly easy schedule.
If nothing else, I hope this kind of clarified what could happen. The particular numbers aren't as important as realizing that some of these outcomes are unlikely because so many other things have to happen. UGA's position is lessened for this reason a lot, because they simply need a lot of events to come up their way to get in. While Missouri controls it's own destiny, it has a lot of very difficult destiny to control. South Carolina has maybe the best chance, but it isn't even more likely than not that they end up in Atlanta.
It'll be a fun, and perhaps heartbreaking race to watch play out.
If you want to see the spreadsheet I used to make these calculations, you can see it here, and you can even download it and put in your own numbers for the 6 SEC games left for these 3 teams, and get the odds based on your own estimations of how likely they are to win.
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