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When you're a team that finished 7-6 and 3-5 in conference play—in a season in which you were picked to win your division, no less—you hope that the previous year was just an aberration and not a sign of things to come.
But the conference's media members have deliberated, and they have made their prediction: the South Carolina Gamecocks have been picked to finish 4th in the SEC East in 2015, the league announced Thursday.
Remember when the Gamecocks were picked to win the SEC East last year? Not quite. In fact, the media hasn't always been on the mark about these things (granted, they did correctly pick Alabama to win the SEC in 2014). Whether it's the "good" wrong or the "bad" wrong for the Gamecocks remains to be seen. (But I digress. We'll leave the overall analysis for later on in the day.)
The Auburn Tigers were picked to be the conference champion, while the Georgia Bulldogs were picked to win the East in 2015. Here's the full predicted finishing order (overall champ in bold, overall voting points in parentheses; championship voting points, if necessary, in italics):
| SEC West | SEC East |
| 1. Alabama (1405) (92) | 1. Georgia (1498) (166) |
| 2. Auburn (1362) (108) | 2. Tennessee (1231) (36) |
| 3. LSU (870) (10) | 3. Missouri (1196) (20) |
| 4. Arkansas (821) (6) | 4. South Carolina (830) (1) |
| 5. Ole Miss (732) (3) | 5. Florida (768) (1) |
| 6. Texas A&M (628) (4) | 6. Kentucky (534) (1) |
| 7. Mississippi State (482) (2) | 7. Vanderbilt (243) |
The league will release its All-SEC picks tomorrow morning, and if some of the preseason magazines are correct, a certain wide receiver wearing #11 for the Gamecocks should be on the first team.