After having nine teams ranked in the preseason, which SEC teams were the biggest disappointments this season?

Entering the 2024-25 college football season, there were nine SEC teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25 Poll. That is over half of the 16 teams currently in the "It Just Means More" conference.  

SEC teams were disappointing by and large in 2024. None of the conference's programs made the championship, the second straight year the SEC wasn't represented in the title game.

Who disappointed the most? Let's take a look.

Oklahoma Sooners (6-7, 2-6 SEC)

As is evident from their record and placement on this list, Oklahoma fell off hard from their preseason ranking as the No. 16 squad in the country.

Oklahoma had only one impressive win this season, a 24-3 win over No. 7 Alabama in what was the second to last regular season game for the Sooners. Other than that, the Sooners went 0-4 in their matchups against ranked squads this season.

After starting the season 4-1, the Sooners finished their season 2-6 in their last eight games with Oklahoma’s only win other than the Alabama win coming in a 59-14 route of the Maine Black Bears.

For a team that had a 7.5 win-over/under this season, finishing with more losses than wins was unfathomable.

Texas A&M Aggies (8-5, 5-3 SEC)

The Aggies were ranked as the No. 20 team in the nation before week one of the college football season. After losing in a tough battle in week one against No. 7 Notre Dame, Texas A&M bounced back with seven straight wins, including wins against No. 9 Missouri and No. 8 LSU.

However, the Aggies didn’t finish the season out strong, losing three of their last four games, including a loss to an Auburn team that finished with just a 2-6 record in the SEC.

The Aggies were beaten 35-31 by an underwhelming USC squad in the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl to close out their season.

Of their last five games, including the bowl game vs. USC, the Aggies were favored in four of them -- meaning that TAMU was favored in three of its last four losses.

Alabama Crimson Tide (9-4, 5-3 SEC)

Alabama finished the season as the No. 11 team in the country, and while that is a substantial drop off from its No. 5 preseason ranking, it is nothing egregious.

So why is Alabama here?

This was the first year under former Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer for the Crimson Tide. The transition from a college football hall of famer -- and maybe the greatest college football coach of all time --, Nick Saban, to DeBoer was a massive one. When you’re the Crimson Tide, you don't get leeway when you finish the season with four losses.

Alabama looked like one of the best teams in the country after starting the season out 4-0 and beating No. 2 Georgia in a 41-34 shootout back in late September, but that didn’t last long.

The very next week after that Georgia win, Alabama went on to lose to unranked Vanderbilt. Following that performance, the Tide escaped with just a 27-25 win at home against unranked South Carolina, a performance that was followed up by a 24-17 loss against No. 11 Tennessee.

The worst loss of all came in the second to last week of the regular season when the Tide were dominated 24-3 by an unranked Oklahoma squad that, at the time, was just 5-5 on the season.

Because of those three regular-season losses, all of which Alabama was favored in, the Tide missed the first-ever 12-team CFP and would go on to face Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl. The Crimson Tide lost to the Wolverines again.

Alabama turned the ball over three times in what ended up being an embarrassing loss for the Crimson Tide and the whole SEC, despite the score being a very close 19-13 to finish.

This Alabama team was predicted to be one of the best three teams in the SEC and one of the five best teams in the nation this preseason. Finishing with four losses, three of which are embarrassing, makes Alabama far and away the most disappointing team in the SEC this past season.