SEC: Georgia may be ready for trip to Atlanta.

Byline: Jason Shoot

Aug. 29--Auburn keeps rewriting history.

The Tigers are the first college football team in 20 years to win a national championship and enter the next season ranked outside the Top 10 in the Associated Press' Top 25 poll. Auburn barely cracked this year's preseason rankings and will enter the regular season ranked 23rd. No team since Colorado in 1991 had won a national title the year before and came back the following season looking at the Top 10 from afar.

Auburn's ranking is as much an indication of what is expected to be a precipitous drop from the heights the team reached in 2010 as it is a prediction of just how tough the Southeastern Conference will be on a week-to-week basis this fall. Eight SEC teams are ranked in the Top 25, and the conference-wide struggle to emerge as the SEC's king of the mountain at season's end is expected to be tenacious.

South Carolina and Georgia are the favorites in the East Division, although that may have as much to do with their respective schedules as the talent they'll put on the field. Neither team plays No. 2 Alabama or No. 4 LSU this season, and the teams' Week 2 showdown in Athens, Ga., will give one …