Another wild day of SEC football action didn’t exactly settle anything in terms of the conference championship and playoff races, but did provide some clarity.

Wins by South Carolina over Missouri and Florida over LSU cut the number of SEC teams that could finish with two or fewer losses from eight to six. And Georgia’s win over Tennessee knocked the Volunteers out of the driver’s seat (or one of two driver’s seats) for a trip to Atlanta for the Dec. 7 conference title game.

With two weeks left in the regular season, Texas and Texas A&M are both 5-1 in SEC play. Georgia — which has only non-conference games remaining — is 6-2.

Tennessee is 5-2, while Alabama and Ole Miss are both 4-2. LSU and Missouri all but drop out of the race at 3-3.

Still, we could finish with a six-way tie for first place in the SEC at the end of the regular season, or a five-way tie for second. In the latter scenario, either Texas or Texas A&M — who meet Nov. 30 in College Station — would get the first spot in the SEC championship game.

So who would get the second?

In most cases, it appears Alabama would.

The Crimson Tide’s advantage would be based on the all-important fourth tiebreaker we discussed in depth last week. Here’s a refresher in case you forgot or missed it entirely.

The SEC’s official tiebreakers go like this:

1. Head-to-head among the tied teams

2. Record vs. common opponents among the tied teams

3. Record against the highest-place opponent among the tied teams

4. Combined winning percentage of all conference opponents for each team

Tiebreakers 1 and 2 would not apply in a five- or six-way tie, because not all the teams played each other or had enough common opponents. Tiebreaker 3 also almost certainly is out the window in a 5-way tie for second because not everyone would have played the first-place team (that’s bad news for Georgia in particular, which is the only team that has beaten Texas; Texas A&M’s loss is to South Carolina, which is not in the discussion unless utter chaos occurs).

So that means Tiebreaker 4, which is essentially strength of schedule, comes into play. Alabama has played Georgia, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Missouri and LSU — all of whom are at least 3-3 in the conference.

The Crimson Tide finishes with Oklahoma and Auburn — two of the lower-tier teams in the league — but even playing them would be more than offset by Georgia and Ole Miss both playing Mississippi State and Kentucky, Texas playing Mississippi State, Oklahoma and Kentucky and Texas A&M playing Mississippi State and Auburn.

We’re not going to get into all the math here, but it appears that the only scenarios that could keep a 6-2 Alabama out of the SEC championship game involve Missouri losing to both Mississippi State or Arkansas in the final two weeks. The Crimson Tide needs Missouri to finish with at least a .500 SEC record to lift its strength of schedule. (If the Tigers lose out, Tennessee could jump back over Alabama by beating Vanderbilt).

It’s all very complicated, but suffice it to say, Alabama is in very good shape for the SEC championship game if it finishes 6-2 in conference play. We’ll check back again on that next week.

The other component is, of course, the College Football Playoff. The SEC championship game loser could have a 10-3 overall record, while two or three or four SEC teams that didn’t make it to Atlanta will likely end up 10-2.

It seems like the number of SEC teams in the playoff is going to be (artificially) capped at four, so the conference championship game loser would have to jump at least two teams with a mathematically better record. This leads to the belief by some that it might be better not to make the SEC championship game at all than it would be to get there and lose.

We’ve seen Alabama twice win national championships when it didn’t even win the SEC West, in the BCS era in 2011 and in the playoff era in 2017. In both years, the Crimson Tide beat a fellow SEC team in the title game.

You can bet, however, that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will lobby like crazy to get his conference’s runner-up in the playoff. We saw his power when he spent all of last year’s “playoff Selection Sunday” arguing (successfully, I might add) that 1-loss SEC champion Alabama should make the four-team playoff over unbeaten ACC champion Florida State.

Sankey will go to bat for the SEC runner-up in similar fashion this year. The last thing he wants is for a trip to the SEC championship to be disincentivized, both for the integrity of competition and for the prestige of the conference title game.

But we first need to find out who’s in the SEC championship game before we can determine who’s in the playoff. And we very likely won’t know who’s going to Atlanta until after the last game ends on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Should be an interesting final two weeks.