Belly of the Beast

SEC Picks of Week 11

2009-11-12T00:27:00.003-05:00

Since I took last week off to attend to very important things and pretend that I was extremely busy, I suppose it's time to update the always fluid (and what will ultimately prove to be incorrect, as I usually am) SEC bowl hierarchy heading into this eleventh week of the season. Please note that whatever absurd, Kool-Aid swilling confidence I had in Ole Miss earlier this season is now completely shattered.

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS THAT WILL MAKE THE CONFERENCE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
Alabama
Florida

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS THAT WILL BE GUARANTEED TO BE WARM
LSU

TEAMS STUCK BETWEEN THE PREVIOUS CATEGORY AND THE NEXT ONE
Auburn
Tennessee

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS WITH A DECENT CHANCE OF FREEZING TO DEATH
Georgia
Arkansas
South Carolina

TEAMS FLIRTING WITH BOWL ELIGIBILITY
Kentucky
Ole Miss

TEAMS NEEDING A MIRACLE TO MAKE A BOWL
Mississippi State

PLEASE, JUST SHUT IT DOWN
Vanderbilt

Made while stirring a giant vat of gumbo to welcome the Shrimp Boat Captain back to Oxford...

Last week: 7-1
Season: 64-12 (.842)

Tennessee at Ole Miss
And now comes the day of reckoning. No, not Ed Orgeron's return to Oxford, a place which saw him nearly get into a physical altercation with his neighbors (allegedly, of course), land one good recruiting class out of three and win exactly 10 games in three years, of which three wins were courtesy of the now fired Tommy West's Memphis Tigers. I was actually looking forward to this game earlier in the year so I could see the Shrimp Boat grind his teeth into a fine paste as some of his good recruits destroyed his new team. However, that will not happen. The day of reckoning I am talking about is today. I am now faced with and will admit the cold, hard truth that Jonathan Crompton is a better quarterback than Jevan Snead, and, on Saturday, I will look at Tennessee's sidelines and wish the two teams could swap quarterbacks before the game starts. Just thinking about that moment makes me want to reach for a bottle of the stuff Orgeron used to drink in his headbutting days.

Ole Miss will lose this game for two reasons: One, the aforementioned Jevan Snead. I can't emphasize enough just how bad he is. Yes, he's incredibly gifted physically, but upstairs, to quote Ray Finkle's father, "the engine's running, but nobody's behind the wheel." And two, the Ole Miss run defense is not the wrecking ball it was last year. In fact, it's more like the arm barrier thing that you find at parking garages. Yes, it's in your way, but if you want to break through it you can (this of course is assuming that everything in movies and television is true and it really is that easy to break those things). Tennessee will rush four people, drop seven and wait for the turnovers to start happening. Then, once they get those turnovers, they're going to pound Ole Miss with the ground game. Hell, now that Crompton has performed well enough to pull himself off Tennessee fans' hit lists, he might get a little frisky and throw 25 times.

Tennessee is going to win this game, so the real question is how long does Ole Miss stick with Snead? After the Auburn and Alabama disasters (not counting South Carolina, in these two games he often had plenty of time to throw), what else does he need to do to prove he doesn't need to play anymore? Five interceptions? Pull a Michael Henig and throw six? Seriously, what is it going to take to get him out of there? Once he throws up a 3 of 11 for 35 yards with two picks in the first half, HE DOES NOT NEED TO PLAY THE REST OF THE YEAR (unless Nathan Stanley is even more awful, which, at this point, is hard to believe). As I've said before, Ole Miss has to at least find out what Stanley brings to the table, even if it is an onslaught of incompletions and bad decisions.

Wow, that was depressing. The only thing I'm looking forward to on Saturday is the potential Nathan Stanley appearance and the possibility that Ed Orgeron's meating-out level will be at DEFCON 2.

LATE ADDITION: It looks as if Ole Miss will be without Greg Hardy, who apparently has a broken wrist and might be done for the year (THE SPORTS GODS CONTINUE TO HAVE A GOOD LAUGH AT ALL THE HOPE WE HAD FOR THE 2009 SEASON). And, in even more exciting news, three freshmen Tennessee football players (only two of them actually play) were arrested last night for attempted armed robbery. These assholes used a pellet gun to try rob two people outside a convenience store. The word "try" is key here because the two victims actually didn't have any money. Whoops. Oh, and of these three assholes, one was apparently wearing some Tennessee gear, and to help them get away from the scene of the crime, they all hopped in a Toyota Prius, which of course is known for its ability to reach high speeds quickly and then handle well at those speeds. And the excitement rolls on in the Lane Kiffin era.

Kentucky at Vanderbilt
More than likely, this is Vandy's last chance to help keep Ed Orgeron as the last SEC coach to not win a conference game. Yes, they play Tennessee next week, but unless Jonathan Crompton remembers that he's Jonathan Crompton and not whoever he is right now, that's probably not going to happen. For Kentucky, they become bowl eligible if they win and will spend the holidays in the very spot in which they play on Saturday, most likely playing one of the eight 7-5 ACC teams in the Music City Bowl. So as you can see, there's a lot at stake this weekend.

Which makes it perfectly fitting that this game is rewarded with the JP Memorial 11:30 AM Time Slot (technically it's 11:21, but no one can look at a clock with any degree of accuracy before noon on a Saturday). And while we're talking time slots, allow me to pass out a hearty "go straight to hell" to CBS for picking up the Ole Miss game and putting it on at 11 o'clock in the damn morning. I was looking forward to a home conference game at night that didn't involve Vanderbilt (in 2008 Vandy was the only such game and before then it was 2006 against Georgia, which by the way, goes down as having one of the drunkest crowds in the history of sport. An 8 PM Central, not Eastern mind you, kickoff and a toothless Ed Orgeron team going against a Georgia team ranked tenth. It was a small miracle people were still alive by the time the third quarter started.).

Anyway, I've lost my train of thought now. Kentucky wins.

Florida at South Carolina
Both of these teams are sputtering their way down the stretch this season. For one of them, this occurrence is called November. For the other, it's a bit confusing. In the past two seasons, Florida has had one game (loss to Georgia in 2007 and Ole Miss in 2008) that caused it to find another gear and then ride on to burn and pillage the rest of its opponents. This year, it's not happening. Whether it's shaky offensive line play or very average wide receivers, the Gators are incapable of wiping people off the map in Genghis Kahn-like fashion. Luckily for them, all the other teams they've faced are more incompetent or don't have a complete team. In other words, Florida's superior talent level is saving its ass right now (which is a good problem to have). That will most likely change when they get to Atlanta, but we're not there yet.

Luckily for the Gators, the typically confused and bumbling late-season South Carolina team has arrived and can't seem to do anything right for an extended period of time. But unluckily for the Gators, South Carolina has enough talent to make this a game. And if Steve Spurrier's inner coach is still alive, he has to make this one close. It's a chance to prove that he can still coach, and that he should stick around Columbia for a few more years. But if the Gamecocks come out and drop their Arkansas performance on Saturday, I think you can officially start the Steve Spurrier "retirement" clock. This Florida team is not good enough to run South Carolina out of the stadium and if they do, it's on Spurrier, which I don't want to happen because I can't imagine life without him. I'll miss him so damn much. His laugh. His scent. After this is over we might have to get an apartment together. I think it's a close game, but Florida wins.

Auburn at Georgia
Joe Cox might be one of four quarterbacks in the SEC for which I wouldn't trade Jevan Snead (the others: Tyson Lee, Larry Smith and Mike Hartline), but I'd still think about it. Do I want a short, weak-armed, poor decision-maker or a tall, rocket-armed, poor decision-maker? It's a good question. I suppose I'd take the more physically gifted quarterback just on the chance he might get lucky on some passes, but a Joe Cox would be less aggravating because you know he has very little physical ability. Either way you're going to lose.

I'm not really sure where I was going with all of that because I was trying to find something to talk about for a game in which I have no idea what to expect. Auburn isn't a very good team (they didn't suddenly become good by beating Ole Miss). Georgia is a team that has a resting heart rate of about 12 beats a minute, so while not legally dead they're teetering between this life and the next. But, in Georgia's defense, they've only been completely destroyed once (Tennessee) and recently kept things interesting against Florida before collapsing under the weight of their own suckiness.

So, given that I have no idea what could happen here, let's go to the numbers to see if we can figure out anything because 60% of the time, numbers work every time. Both teams come in with below average defenses (Georgia 7th and Auburn 11th) while Auburn, thanks to some of the bad teams they've obliterated, has the top offense in the league and Georgia comes stumbling in at number 10. But, what we've learned about this Auburn defenses is that they spend a great deal of time making other mediocre offenses look like they know what they're doing (LSU, Ole Miss, Kentucky and even West Virginia). Georgia, despite being led by Joe Cox, should have the ability to move the ball and score on them.

However, Georgia's pass defense has the toughness and resistance of France's armies since they kicked Napoleon out of the country. This means that Chris Todd has a good chance to put a decent game together, and like most teams, if you can throw and run it's pretty easy to score. But, all of that said, it'll be a cold day in hell before I back Chris Todd on the road. Give me the Ginger Ninja and Georgia.

Louisiana Tech at LSU
This should be a lovely get-together between the highbrows of north central Louisiana and those who make their homes south of and along I-10. It'll be like a family reunion of sorts except with more violence and cursing. But rest assured, 80% of them will be related. LSU wins.

Alabama at Mississippi State
Here's a comforting report for State fans who should still be outraged over the fumble that was ruled not be to a fumble in the Florida game. You know how every time there's a play being reviewed the announcers immediately launch into the "they're seeing the same views you're seeing at home" routine? Well, not exactly. You see, the picture you see at home is in crystal clear high definition. The one the SEC replay officials see is in boring standard definition. So games that can cost schools millions, coaches their jobs and years off fans' lives can be decided by picture quality that is both disgusting and beneath me (watching standard definition for more than three minutes makes me want to vomit). So everyone remember that this weekend when a play critical to any chance State has to stay in this game goes upstairs. I, for one, am looking forward to yet another screw up by SEC replay officials (or officials in general) at the expense of Mississippi State (now that I've said this, I fully expect Ole Miss to be punished).

As for the Bulldogs staying in this game, they'll need Greg McElroy to stink worse than he has all year, which would be pretty bad. The only problem with that is even in the games in which he was awful, most notably against South Carolina (10 of 20 for 92 yards and two INTs), Alabama was still in control of the game. Their defense is that good (if you're State fan, just wait until you see them in person). They'll challenge Tyson Lee to basically be the offense for the Bulldogs, and if you've seen Lee play, you know that the more plays he is involved in, the more mistakes he creates. I look for him to solidify his spot at number two in the Awww-Shit Trophy rankings this week (no one will catch Jevan Snead unless he is placed on the sidelines).

I think we'll see a game much like the Florida/State game, that is one that is close in terms of the score, but never out of Alabama's control. State doesn't have enough offense or the players to actually pull this off, but I look forward to seeing Nick Saban curse repeatedly as his team slowly and frustratingly plows its way to a win.

Troy at Arkansas
Arkansas.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-11-09T16:19:00.003-05:00

My apologies for not giving the world 2500 words on who would win the eight SEC games over the weekend, but seeing that six of those teams played awful teams, I can assure you that nothing remotely interesting would have been found here (of course, that's assuming interesting things are normally found here, which is debatable). So without further delay, let's get right to all those thrilling games from the weekend.

GAME RECAPS

Arkansas 33, South Carolina 16
Here are two series of events that perfectly define the Steve Spurrier era of one step forward, two steps back at South Carolina:

1. Second quarter, just under three minutes left before halftime, leading 10-7, the Gamecocks have the ball third at two at the Arkansas 49. They fail to convert and punt to Arkansas, who starts at their own 24. The Hogs immediately complete a 69 yard pass to D.J. Williams to the South Carolina 7 and kick a field goal to tie it before halftime.

2. Third quarter, first play of the half, South Carolina throws an 80 yard touchdown pass. They then immediately drop the snap on the extra point and fail to convert it.

Now, as an Ole Miss fan, I can appreciate that effort in disappointment. I've seen much worse than that over the years, but the essence of failure was still there. This is now year five for Spurrier at South Carolina and I'm not sure you can say they're any better than they were after year one. I know South Carolina has never had this level of consistent winning before (seriously, go look at their football history. It. Is. Awful.), so it's hard to question South Carolina for not wanting to make any changes (and this is still Steve Spurrier we're talking about), but with the lack of improvement and same dumb mistakes made over and over again, maybe it is time to discuss the idea of Spurrier moving to a golf course and an environment free of college kids who ruin his perfect plays. A firing seems as likely as a successful South Carolina running game, but a "retirement" doesn't seem completely out of question. So with that said, let's all watch South Carolina beat Florida next week, only to lose the following week to Clemson by four touchdowns.

Georgia 38, Tennessee Tech 0
While Joe Cox did not throw any interceptions, his backup (and I would assume the starter for next year), Logan Gray, did and is getting a jump on the 2010 Awww-Shit Trophy.

Kentucky 37, Directional Kentucky School 12
Let's all enjoy an interpretive dance to the Star Spangled Banner.

Auburn 63, Furman 31
I am happy to report that former Two-a-Days star Max Lerner of "We're gonna lose the game because Max Lerner is a dumbass" fame led the Paladins in tackles with eight and even forced a fumble. Unfortunately for Furman, Ross Wilson was not quarterbacking the offense and Rush Probst was not involved in any way.

Alabama 24, LSU 15
I'm sure you've read and heard all about LSU's claims that they were jobbed by the officials in this game. And they do have some legitimate claims, especially the Patrick Peterson interception that was incredibly ruled not to be an interception, but what everyone is ignoring here is that even if Peterson had been given credit for making the pick, LSU still had to have another score, and leading that effort would still have been Jarrett Lee. JARRETT LEE. And the scoring drive would have had to been one of 69 yards (assuming he would have been spotted out at the 31). The odds of that happening are about as good as an SEC replay official getting a call right.

I understand the outrage over not having the chance to watch Lee throw some more incompletions or another interception, but personally I'd rather not have to go through that and save myself the stress from such an event that would most certainly take off at least three weeks of my life. This game was over when Charles Scott and, I can't believe I'm typing this, Jordan Jefferson were done for the game. Jefferson played under control and was actually giving LSU a chance to win the game, as was Scott who was really starting to look good before hurting his shoulder. Without those two, the burden of winning the game fell on the LSU defense to create a turnover (which they sort of did) or a touchdown and on Jarrett Lee, which was almost a guarantee Alabama would win.

So now that the SEC finally has its Armageddon match up between Florida and Alabama set up, maybe this will be the end of the weekly buffoonery of SEC field and replay officials. However, they still want both of them to reach the title game undefeated, so two more weeks of stupidity should be expected, assuming that there is some sort of conspiracy, of which I am drinking the kool-aid. Only the National Basketball Association deals with these rampant conspiracy rumors, which may not be exactly rumors. How else can one explain such a constant screw up when a play goes to the replay booth (or even on the field)? With the amount of incompetency reigning down from these veiled figures in the press box, I wouldn't be surprised if the outcomes of the reviews were based on two drifters fighting over a tin can of saltines. And until your team has been thoroughly screwed over by one of these assholes, you'll never understand the rage that the rest of us have at the SEC.

Tennessee 56, Memphis 28
Now that the Tommy West era in Memphis is officially over, he has a few things he'd like to tell the world what the rest of us already knew. Watch the bridges burn.

Florida 27, Vanderbilt 3
The good news was that Vanderbilt had quite the balanced offense attack on Saturday. The bad news is that it produced only 100 passing yards and 99 rushing yards. It is still my hope that they can somehow beat Kentucky next week and allow Ed Orgeron to hold on to the title of the last head coach to lead his team to zero SEC wins in a season.

Ole Miss 38, Directional School 14
Rest assured ladies and gentlemen, Jevan Snead is still not very good. I was there for a little over a half of this game and nothing I saw leads me to believe he can produce a win against Tennessee. After he stinks up the first half this week against the Vols, there is no evidence in existence that could possibly prove he'll be a competent quarterback this year, which means he's officially done, so let's move on. For the sake of my sanity and health, let's at least give Nathan Stanley the chance to show that he too stinks.

GAME I DIDN'T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Northwestern 17, Iowa 10
How is it humanly possible to talk about Iowa for a month straight? Well, at least this will be the last week in which the Hawkeyes are mentioned here. Finally, they ran out of sacrificial animals and the football gods struck them down with all their might. In fact, they even took out the starting quarterback in payment for Iowa's streak that was bordering on challenging on Seal for luckiest sequence of events in the history of mankind (his music career and his smoking hot wife, which to this day cannot be explained). Unfortunately, this turn of events means we'll most likely be seeing Ohio State in the Rose Bowl where Terrelle Pryor will ring in the New Year with a holiday basket of incompletions and generally awful quarterbacking skill.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

It's the first week in which we have no winner. Seriously, everyone sucked this week.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Jarrett Lee, QB, LSU
Although not really his fault since he wasn't supposed to play, Lee came in for the injured Jordan Jefferson and reminded everyone why he no longer plays. He wins this week's award because he had the opportunity to at least give LSU a chance (assuming they wouldn't have been screwed by the officials even more) and responded with a 4 of 10 for 44 yards and 1 INT.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Nick Saban, Alabama
Despite a void at the quarterback position, Saban finally broke LSU's win streak in Tuscaloosa. Yes, he got a little help, but in the end it was his defense that put LSU away for good.

2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy Leaderboard
The trophy, which gets its name from the reaction of fans when their team’s quarterback throws an interception (“Awww-shit!!!), will be awarded at the end of the year to the quarterback in the SEC who throws the most interceptions. A more prestigious award I cannot recall.

1. Jevan Snead 13
2. Joe Cox 12
3. Tyson Lee 11
4. Jonathan Crompton 10

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

Tennessee at Ole Miss
The Shrimp Boat Captain returns to the school in which he won just three conference games and 10 games overall in three years. I plan on being there when the Vols get off the bus with a big pot of gumbo in hopes of luring him away from his game day responsibilities. Not that jumping up and down with the players before they run out of the tunnel is that important, but anything to throw off their normal Saturday would be a good thing.

Florida at South Carolina
Florida's last major test in keeping the undefeated season alive before reaching Atlanta against Alabama. I would mention something about Florida State, but let's be serious.

Alabama at Mississippi State
It has to be some sort of record for a team to host two top two teams in one season. I'm sure someone has done the research (if not, get on that, the rest of us need to know), but for now let's say it's never happened before.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-11-02T23:41:00.002-05:00

And the year of wretchedly bad quarterbacking marches on in the SEC. Back in August when I was making my preseason predictions, one of the reasons I thought so highly of Florida and Ole Miss was that they were the two teams that were returning experienced and very talented quarterbacks. No one else in the conference had a quarterback with both of those qualities. Now nine weeks into the 2009 season, we know that any team that has a quarterback, experienced or not, that doesn’t turn the ball over multiple times a game and doesn’t throw completions to the ground with great zeal is all a team really needs to win. Because more than likely, the opposing bad quarterback will lead his team to loads of turnovers and offensive incompetency.

This weekend saw Chris Todd and Jonathan Crompton, two guys I have mercilessly labeled as horrible, lead their teams to wins over higher ranked teams. Granted, both won at home, but they played at an average level, didn’t do anything to kill their team and watched as the opposing team staggered around and freely gave away the ball. And remarkably, these two have combined for 10 wins this season. 10! These two have shown that with all the crappy quarterbacking taking place, you don’t have to be good to win, just don’t be a complete and total liability.

GAME RECAPS

Auburn 33, Ole Miss 20
Let me open this individual recap by offering an apology to all Auburn fans and Chris Todd. As I mentioned above, if you’re a regular reader here then you know I don’t think very highly of Todd’s ability as a quarterback. And I’ll go ahead and say that I still don’t (on his very best day he is average). But, I was wrong to blast his lack of abilities while not doing the same to Ole Miss quarterback Jevan Snead. If it were possible to do so, I would welcome a midseason trade for Chris Todd. While he has 25% of the physical gifts Snead has, he’s not a liability for his team right now. Jeavan Snead is. (And that is how you write a paragraph that offers an apology, a backhanded compliment and a disparaging remark.)

Since leaving the game early on Saturday (yes, I know that probably makes me a bad Rebel, but after watching Ole Miss’ sixth drive enter Auburn territory and end with no points, I had seen enough. Although, I’m sorry I missed number seven, which ended in yet another Jevan Snead interception.), I have tried to come up with a single, legitimate reason why he should continue to be Ole Miss’ starting quarterback. So far, the best I could come up with was that when the offensive line falls apart as they do at least four or five times a game, he has the most mobility of the quarterbacks and has a chance to gain some yards running. That’s it. He doesn’t do one thing well (except throw really hard, he still has that going for him). He doesn’t read coverages. He doesn’t look off defenders. He doesn’t stay calm in the pocket. He doesn’t limit turnovers. He doesn’t throw the ball downfield or over the middle with any degree of accuracy. He. Is. Awful.

Yesterday when I got home, I decided to put myself through the misery again and watched the game (where does DVR rank on the list of top inventions in the past 10 years? Five? Four? I would absolutely be a wreck without it.). What I saw confirmed that which I saw in person on Saturday and for most of this season: He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on with defensive coverages. If his first read isn’t there, he panics and starts dancing around, hoping that he’ll randomly see someone break open. Good quarterbacks can identify the coverage pre-snap or as they’re dropping back to pass. They also know where to go immediately if their first read isn’t open. Snead can do none of that, which results in performances like we’ve seen all year, a bundle of imcompletions and interceptions.

Perhaps some of his suckiness can be blamed on the offensive line and a group of receivers that don’t appear to be as strong as last year (with the exception of Shay Hodge who is even better than last year). To me, the South Carolina game was the only game in which the offensive line was a total failure. Every other game they have been at worst average, giving Snead the time he needed. Auburn was able to get lots of pressure late on Saturday because Ole Miss was in obvious passing downs (and losing by two scores) and their ends didn’t have to worry about the run. Yes, Bradley Sowell isn’t very good, but he’s not the matador he was against South Carolina. With the exception of three or four plays, I thought he did a pretty good job on Saturday. And until I see receivers constantly dropping wide open passes or even looked at after Hodge is covered, I can’t assess much blame to them.

For Ole Miss to have a chance to beat Tennessee, LSU and, gulp, Mississippi State, they have to find a quarterback who will not commit turnovers. Incomplete passes can be overcome, but turnovers more often than not cannot be overcome. And right now, Jevan Snead is killing, repeat, KILLLING Ole Miss with his turnovers. I don’t know what Nathan Stanley brings to the table with his limited experience, but I think Ole Miss has to roll the dice and find out. You know what Snead is bringing and most of it isn’t good. Stanley could turn out to provide nothing, but when you’re getting nothing with what you have right now, it’s worth the risk to find out if you can at least get something average behind center.

If you’re still reading at this point, congratulations. And if you’re not an Ole Miss fan and just read all that, I salute you and can tell you that this is the portion of the recap where I stop complaining and discuss the actual game. To me, this was a game that Ole Miss lost in the first and second quarters. Against teams that are struggling like Auburn was coming into this game, you can’t let them hang around, especially after jumping on them 7-0. You hammer away and get to halftime up two scores. Ole Miss completely failed to do that. They bumbled around and let Auburn start to get confidence, especially on defense where after Zac Etheridge’s injury, the Tigers had three scholarship defensive backs available. DO YOU HEAR ME JEVAN SNEAD? THREE!!! Then Auburn was able to hit a couple of big pass plays and the next thing Ole Miss knew, they were losing a game they had control of 10-7 (Seriously, Ole Miss had 230 yards of total offense in the first half and scored seven points. And for the game, not counting Dexter McCluster’s long touchdown run, Ole Miss had one offensive drive that ended in points.).

I thought the Auburn offense did a nice job of using the aggressiveness of the Ole Miss defense against itself by using multiple play action passes, misdirection runs and getting to the outside quickly to but the burden of tackling on the linebackers and secondary, which are not as talented as the defensive line. And when Chris Todd threw, it was usually to a deep route or a safe, short pass outside. They didn’t ask him to throw a lot or do anything very complicated and he made good decisions, mostly not throwing to the other team or at the ground.

This is the freaking recap that won’t end. ENJOY ANOTHER PARAGRAPH. Going forward for Auburn, they’re now bowl eligible, which I was close to 2,000% positive wouldn’t happen this year. They’ll beat Furman this week and as awful as Georgia looks, they’ve got a good chance to win that one to finish 8-4 (after a loss to Alabama). Maybe chalk it up to a weak SEC, but for this team with what they have to finish 8-4 is outstanding. For Ole Miss, suddenly a 6-6 record is a real possibility. Tennessee is coming on, especially on defense, and LSU, while not anything special, is getting stronger. I think 7-5 is the best the Rebels can hope for (knowing that a quarterback change probably isn’t happening since the coaches are probably convinced the real Snead is the one from the second half of 2008), and worst case they’ll have to beat State to become bowl eligible since they can’t count both wins against I-AA opponents. And if State stays at five wins, this could be the first Egg Bowl that actually is worth something. The teams will still be bad, but at least a bowl birth will be at stake, which hasn’t happened since the Tommy Tuberville/Jackie Sherrill games.

Florida 41, Georgia 17
Another big game in another gimmick uniform results in a familiar pounding of Georgia. Joe Cox, reminding everyone that if you’re a fifth year senior and it’s your first year to start that you will suck (unless you play at Texas Tech), continued his impressive spiral down into the wing of the Short, Crappy SEC Quarterbacks Hall of Fame by throwing three more interceptions (what a race it will be between him and Jevan Snead for the Awww-Shit Trophy in these last few weeks). It was a performance that upset Mark Richt enough that he actually shrugged his shoulders and groaned (What a monster this man is. How dare he pretend like he cares.).

As expected, Georgia’s offense sputtered its way through most of the game, save for a ten-point flurry early in the second quarter (it also took Joe Cox only 20 passes to make multiple mistakes, not the 30+ I predicted). And, as expected, Florida was able to run when it pleased against the Bulldog run defense. Although to be fair to the run defense, the pass defense was equally awful when presented with its few chances to defend.

I was right about Urban Meyer doing something stupid, but wrong about when it would happen. In case you haven’t heard, Meyer suspended Brandon Spikes for the first half against Vanderbilt (and will most likely miss the second half after Florida builds a 28-0 lead) for eye gouging Georgia running back Washaun Ealey as he lay at the bottom of a pile after a play. I have no idea why he chose to do that, maybe Ealey had said unpleasant things to him earlier, but to go at a guy when he can’t fight back is chicken shit. At least Oregon running back LeGarrett Blount had the courtesy to attack a guy who had his hands free. And making it more of a total bitch move, Spikes is 6’3” and weighs 258 pounds. Ealey is 5’11” and weighs 205. So more than likely, Spikes could beat his ass straight up, yet he chose to go after him while he was lying on his back unable to defend himself. Well done, Brandon, well done.

Arkansas 63, Eastern Michigan 27
I’m sure it was as compelling and rich as we thought it would be.

Mississippi State 31, Kentucky 24
Yet another game about which I was wrong. I was right about Mississippi State being able to run the ball (348 yards), but apparently there was no Florida hangover for the Bulldogs. And it helped that backup Kentucky quarterback Morgan Newton was, how shall I put this gently, ONE PERCENT BETTER THAN JEVAN SNEAD. If watching bad quarterbacks is your thing, I strongly suggest watching the replay of this game. Combined, the two combatants went 21 of 35 for 264 yards, 1 TD and 3 INTs, which will be in the neighborhood of Jevan Snead’s stat line against Tennessee, but with a lower completion percentage.

I’d like to spend some time on this, but from the two-ish quarters I watched I can’t think of anything worth discussing. Anthony Dixon was outstanding (33 carries for 252 yards) against the nine-man Kentucky defense…wait, I’m being told Kentucky actually did play with 11. My mistake. I wrote last week that Kentucky had a great chance to win if they held State to around 150 yards on the ground. Well, State more than doubled that number and Kentucky lost a game they really needed, and probably should have won, in order to gain bowl eligibility.

Georgia Tech 56, Vanderbilt 31
Just when I was ready to have a good laugh at how the highest ranked team in the ACC was in trouble with the worst team in the SEC, Georgia Tech pillaged and burned the confidence and joy Vanderbilt had going with one of their strongest offensive outputs of the season. The good news for Vandy is that they were officially eliminated from bowl contention and no longer have to experience the small bursts of confidence being crushed by a superior opponents in their last three games.

Tennessee 31, South Carolina 13
With three early turnovers from South Carolina, all Jonathan Crompton had to do was not screw the first half up. He tapped into the limited ability he has and didn’t. He even threw two touchdowns. I can’t believe I’m about to write this, and I know South Carolina gift-wrapped this game for the Vols, but Tennessee is looking like an 8-4 team. Crompton has eliminated his turnover problem and their defense is turning into a really good unit, despite injuries at the linebacker position. And looking at their last four games (Memphis, at Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and at Kentucky), there’s not a game in which they won’t be favored. Now, Crompton certainly has the ability to return to the real Crompton, but until he does, this team is a pretty decent.

Auburn is bowl eligible under a head coach who previously won five games in two years. Tennessee, coached by Lane Kiffin, has morphed into a decent team. These are frightening, uncertain times my friends. I can’t get a handle on it either. But, there is one certainty in life, and that is South Carolina’s inability to run the ball. The Gamecocks piled up 65 yards on 20 carries and as a result were forced to throw 50 times in the rain. And it didn’t help that they were down 21-0 before Steve Spurrier could even grind another millimeter off his teeth. But, the Gamecocks came in as a one-dimensional team and Tennessee made sure they stayed that way. Kenny Miles leads this team in carries with 86. Number two? Stephen Garcia with 72. As far as I know there is no running back named Stephen Garcia, so we’ll assume that’s the quarterback named Stephen Garcia. Unless you’re Georgia Tech, Navy, Air Force or some other option team I can’t name right now, that should never happen.

If South Carolina wants to find itself in Florida in January and end their typical year-end collapse, they have to find a way to run the ball. Arkansas and Clemson while not great teams can be frisky enough to beat the Gamecocks if they know they can stop the run with four or five guys. Those are two teams that South Carolina should beat, which would get them to eight wins, and a perfect game against Florida, who is beatable, is possible if they can become balanced. But at the rate they’re running the ball, a 6-6 finish isn’t that absurd.

LSU 42, Tulane 0
JUST END THIS DAMN POST ALREADY!!!

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Iowa 42, Indiana 24
I think it’s safe to assume now that there are no more living cows, sheep or any other form of livestock in the state of Iowa. Every last one of them has now been sacrificed for the 2009 Hawkeye season. How else would one explain a game in which Iowa turns it over SIX times and wins by 18? Surely Indiana isn’t that awful, right? I think we should also send a warning to all of Iowa’s neighboring states because now that Iowa is out of sacrificial livestock, they'll be coming for yours.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Anthony Dixon, RB, Mississippi State
252 yards on 33 carries and two touchdowns. I’d say this one was pretty easy. With three games to go, Dixon has already hit the 1,000-yard mark. He’ll get a week off before his biggest challenge of the year against Alabama.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Jevan Snead, QB, Ole Miss
16 of 35 for 175 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs. Not much more to say here other than what I wrote earlier. I can only hope this is his last appearance here either because he is no longer allowed to play quarterback this season or he goes on some sort of hot streak that no one sees coming.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Dan Mullen, Mississippi State
I wrote last week that State needed a miracle to get bowl eligible. Now they only need a break or two thanks to this giant win. Mullen was able to get them over the Florida loss and steal a game on the road. All that remains for him to do is find a win against Alabama, Arkansas or Ole Miss.

2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy Leaderboard
The trophy, which gets its name from the reaction of fans when their team’s quarterback throws an interception (“Awww-shit!!!), will be awarded at the end of the year to the quarterback in the SEC who throws the most interceptions. A more prestigious award I cannot recall.

1. Jevan Snead 13
2. Joe Cox 12
3. Tyson Lee 11
4. Jonathan Crompton 10

Larry Smith and Mike Hartline have fallen out of contention due to improved play and/or injury. Mostly injury.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

South Carolina at Arkansas
Can Ryan Mallett actually play well against a good defense? Will Stephen Garcia throw fewer than 48 times? Will more than 200 South Carolina fans make the 78-hour trek from Columbia to Fayetteville?

LSU at Alabama
Alabama’s last major threat to ending it’s undefeated season before Atlanta. Is LSU a decent team or one that has thrived on playing crappy teams as of late?

SEC Picks of Week 9

2009-10-29T15:59:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned last week, we’re in the middle of a stretch where teams begin to make their moves towards good bowl games, bad bowl games or waiting for spring practice to start. So in order to give you an idea of where each team is headed as of this week (after this weekend I’m sure this will be totally worthless), I give you the SEC bowl hierarchy.

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS THAT WILL MAKE THE CONFERENCE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
Alabama
Florida

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS THAT WILL BE GUARANTEED TO BE WARM
LSU
South Carolina

TEAMS STUCK BETWEEN THE PREVIOUS CATEGORY AND THE NEXT ONE
Ole Miss

TEAMS HEADED TO BOWLS WITH A DECENT CHANCE OF FREEZING TO DEATH
Georgia
Auburn

TEAMS FLIRTING WITH BOWL ELIGIBILITY
Kentucky
Tennessee
Arkansas

TEAMS NEEDING A MIRACLE TO MAKE A BOWL
Mississippi State

PLEASE, JUST SHUT IT DOWN
Vanderbilt

So there you have it. As always, those rankings will be under constant change. On to the picks.

Made while applauding Major League Baseball for completing a World Series game in under six hours and eighteen minutes...

Last week: 6-0
Season: 53-8 (.869)

Ole Miss at Auburn
A second straight week for Ole Miss in the JP Memorial 11:30 AM Time Slot (technically, the game starts at 11:21, but if it’s before noon all times run together). Back in the height of David Cutcliffe’s mediocrity, the Rebels were a constant feature at 11:30, usually bumbling their way through a spirited contest against Vanderbilt or playing the biggest home game of the season while the crowd is mostly still asleep (Note: This is slightly different from the usual Ole Miss crowd. During most games scheduled at a normal time, only like 25% of the crowd is asleep.). Regardless, what a treat it will be to wake up at the same time I normally get up for work in order to be at this game. Good times. And not that I’ll be able to experience it, but from what I heard about last week’s telecast, allegedly Andre Ware, the color analyst for those watching on TV, was actually sharp and on point with his comments. This, of course, is a disgrace to the legacy left behind by Dave Rowe. Everyone associated with an 11:30 AM broadcast is expected to and should perform at the lowest possible level humanly possible. And wear short sleeve dress shirts with a tie. Ware should be removed immediately and given the chance to work with a professional crew.

Moving on to the game, Auburn currently finds itself in a freefall. They can’t pass, can’t run now that teams know they can’t pass and can’t play defense. Even the legendary Dave Rowe knows that’s not a good combination (“BIG MAN ON BIG MAN…BAM!!!” Sorry, it’s just that I miss him so damn much.). And even worse for the Tigers, Ole Miss comes into this game seemingly on the rise. They rolled up 550 yards of offense on a defense one spot behind Auburn’s in total defense and shut down a one-dimensional offense, which Auburn has. I think this game has the makings of another thrashing received by Auburn.

Barring a multitude of turnovers, Ole Miss should be able move the ball freely and score probably in the same neighborhood of points as they did against Arkansas. If your run defense stinks, and Auburns does (11th in the conference), it’s almost impossible to keep the opposing offense from doing whatever they want to do. Mediocre defenses have the ability to keep their teams in games they have no business being in because they can take away the running game from the opposing team. Auburn can’t do that. And, in fact, their passing defense isn’t much better (9th in the league). Anytime Jordan Jefferson could be described as sharp and the phrase “career night” is used after playing your defense, you stink.

The only scenario I see in which Auburn pulling this off is if they take a page from the Lane Kiffin playbook. Run as much as they possibly can, slow their offense down (meaning get rid of the no-huddle) and hope Jevan Snead turns back into Alabama Jevan Snead. That’s a tall order because I know that while offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn will go run heavy, he won’t slow down his offense. He’s going to want to show Houston Nutt what a bad idea it was to ignore him at Arkansas. Even if he puts that beef aside, I still don’t think it’s enough. Ole Miss wins.

Georgia vs. Florida (in Jacksonville)
The hometown of Lynyrd Skynyrd will be more than thrilled to see the flood of jorts that will be arriving in their fair city when all the Gator fans show up on Saturday. Normally, there would be a solid contingent of Georgia fans to combat this fashion atrocity, but with the way their season is going (and the fear that Urban Meyer will find away to continue to punish their team for the team celebration in the endzone two years ago), I expect they’ll be scarce. And with good reason. I wouldn’t want to watch Joe Cox throw three more interceptions either.

I would think Georgia will take the Tennessee approach to this game and run the ball, playing ball control, time-consuming football. Unfortunately, there’s a small problem with that strategy. Georgia can’t run. At all. They’re dead last in the conference and Florida happens to be second in the league against the run. So if they can’t run, where does that leave them? If you guessed hanging on the not-so-golden arm of Joe Cox, you are correct. And if you have surmised that’s a bad thing, nice job by you. I’m sure Cox will manage to hit A.J. Green for a few nice gains, but if he’s throwing the ball 30+ times the chance for multiple mistakes goes up something like 4000%.

It’s not all bad news for Georgia though. Florida’s offense is still stumbling around seven games into this season. The lack of a passing game is what will ultimately undo this team, and Georgia has a decent defense against the run (5th in the SEC). If Georgia can force Florida into throwing much more than they want to, the Bulldogs might have a chance. That of course assumes Joe Cox won’t spend the better part of his afternoon throwing to the wrong team. The bad part of forcing Florida into throwing is that the Georgia pass defense is awful (11th), but if I’m playing Florida, I’d rather take my chances with them throwing than running.

Ultimately though, Georgia isn’t very good. Their defense is bad, the offense is one-dimensional and that one-dimensionalness rests on Joe Cox. I think this is a game that Florida dominates and wins, but never really blows it open because of their lack of wide receivers. And I can see Meyer doing something stupid like, say, throwing from his three-yard line with three minutes left while dominating a team on the ground.

Directional School at Arkansas
Nothing cures a two game skid like an 0-7 team coming to town.

Mississippi State at Kentucky
This may be the most interesting game of the weekend while also being one the least watched of the weekend. Both teams are not particularly enjoyable to watch (by that I mean, they don’t have very good offenses or one standout player I would want to see) and amazingly, both are next to each other in almost every major statistical category. Take a look at this:

Scoring Offense
MSU 8th
Kentucky 9th

Scoring Defense
Kentucky 8th
MSU 9th

Total Offense
MSU 7th
Kentucky 9th

Total Defense
Kentucky 8th
MSU 9th

Rushing Offense
MSU 4th
Kentucky 5th

Passing Offense
MSU 10th
Kentucky 11th

Passing Defense
Kentucky 8th
MSU 10th

The only category in which one team has a real advantage over the other is in rushing defense. State is a respectable 7th in the league while Kentucky is last. And therein lies the key to this game. State should be able to run against the Wildcats, and in doing so remove Tyson Lee from the game. However, if the Wildcats can limit that ability, they have a pretty good chance to win.

That may not make any sense, but look at the only teams that have beaten Kentucky: Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, which are all top 25 teams. They’ve beaten all the mediocre and bad teams they’ve played (State falls in the mediocre to bad category), which means I don’t think Kentucky is as bad as I once thought they were. Throw in a home game, a Mississippi State team that is coming off an emotional and physical game against Florida and the whole replay debacle, which became somewhat of a distraction all the way until Tuesday, and I think Kentucky has a pretty good chance to win this game.

Kentucky knows that the best way to win is to force Tyson Lee into throwing as many times as possible. That’s why I think we’ll see them unveil the rarely used and often only seen in video games 10-1 defense. I don’t think they’re good enough to completely shut down the State running game, but if they can hold them in the neighborhood of 150 yards I like their chances. My only concern for Kentucky is their offense, which is missing a quarterback and relies heavily on Randall Cobb, who will be a marked man by the State defense. If the State defense emotionally and physically recovers from last weekend, then State will have a great chance to win. However, I say last week’s game takes its toll on the Bulldogs and going on the road makes it worse and Kentucky wins.

Georgia Tech at Vanderbilt
The Yellow Jackets should destroy Vandy on Saturday, but my one hope for the Commodores in the next few weeks is that they get at least one SEC win just so the Shrimp Boat Captain will still be the last SEC head coach to not win a single conference game. What a spectacular year 2007 was for Ole Miss.

South Carolina at Tennessee
The glorious Lane Kiffin era took itself to yet another level earlier this week as Kiffin continued to rattle on about the incompetence of SEC officials. He even had the Shrimp Boat Captain at some event on Monday night complaining about the calls in the Alabama game. As I’ve said before, I agree with Kiffin’s premise that the officiating in the SEC is incompetent, but the last person who will cause a reform movement to gain any legs is Lane Kiffin. His off-season of repeatedly firing off unfiltered comments helped him lose any credibility he hoped to have. Well, that and his 5-15 record with the Raiders. It seems that logic and trying to get his team bowl eligible (which is dangerously close to not happening) would cause him keep his pie hole shut, but this is the guy who commented that a recruit who signed with South Carolina would spend the rest of his life pumping gas since he turned his back on the crazy house in Knoxville.

Which brings us to this game. A report came out this week that some South Carolina players, most notably captain Moe Brown, were still upset over words that came out of the shit cannon that is Lane Kiffin’s mouth. Brown went as far to say, “I’m taking it very personally. I’m taking it personally to the point where I’m going to show him how we do pump gas at South Carolina.” I find that quote inspiring and confusing at the same time. Sure it indicates revenge is on his mind and that he’s motivated, but is there a secret way to pump gas that I don’t know about? Because I hate pumping gas. If there’s a better way to pump gas and be more aggressive towards the gas pump, then let me know. It could totally change my life (By the way, this is what happens to you when you realize you’re going to spend the next 30 to 40 years working. Any possibility at improving the mundane things in life suddenly becomes exciting.).

Anyway, I’m not really sure where I was going with all of that. Both teams come into this game with pretty good defenses, with the edge going to Tennessee (ranked 3rd in total defense to South Carolina’s 4th). Statistically, Tennessee’s offense is ranked higher than South Carolina’s, but anyone who has watched the Vols knows that can’t be true. Amazingly though, it is. The Vols have sort of a sneakily mediocre offense. They have a strong enough running game that they can use against good defenses to keep the burdens on Jonathan Crompton as few as possible, and a good enough offense that can move the ball fairly well on bad defenses (see: Georgia, Auburn and Western Kentucky). Since South Carolina has a good defense, expect the Alabama/Florida game plan from Tennessee. I would think even though he had a solid game against Alabama, Kiffin will remember that Crompton was playing way out of his element and another performance like that isn’t very likely, and will rely heavily on the run.

South Carolina has a typical South Carolina offense. They look really good in spurts and really awful for long stretches. Stephen Garcia must continue to play like whoever this person is that he has become because I don’t think the Gamecocks will be able to run with much success (9th ranked against Tennessee’s 3rd-ranked run defense). If he starts doing what used to be typical Stephen Garcia things, Tennessee will win. But as much suspicion as I have of him, I think Garcia might be past the old Garcia, which as I have said before shakes me at my core. Death, taxes and Stephen Garcia’s recklessness once were all sure things.

This game will probably come down to Crompton’s ability to make enough plays to win the game. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure he used all of his good plays last week (not that there were very many). I like South Carolina here because, much like bad teams, bad quarterbacks cannot play well for extended periods of time. So let me be the first to welcome the real Jonathan Crompton back to Earth.

Tulane at LSU
LSU wins.

Belly of the Beast Call-In Show

2009-10-28T14:56:00.001-05:00

In honor of Halloween with all its spirits and ghouls and such, it’s the back-from-the-dead Belly of the Beast Call-In Show. I’m sure most of you assumed this was just another idea that lasted two weeks until it was completely crushed under the weight of my laziness. But I’ll bet you didn’t think they were going to make a Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Goes to Hell either. So here it is in all it’s glory. If you’re confused, which happens to most people reading these incoherent thoughts here, the idea here is that if the Belly of the Beast had a call-in show, this is what it would be like. And although I tend to focus mostly on what goes on around the SEC, I take calls covering all schools and conferences. That is, if I had a telephone set up, which I don’t, an ability to broadcast said phone calls (nope) and people actually called, which they wouldn’t. On to our first caller…

Abe from Stillwater, OK: So Dez Bryant gets suspended for the year thanks to lying about a meeting with Deion Sanders? Is there any method to the NCAA’s madness?

Gray: Yes, it’s hard to believe that a guy who has been out of the NFL for three years (although in spirit it’s been more like eight. Seriously, do you remember anything after his time in Dallas?) and he’s still making life difficult for wide receivers. And why Deion Sanders has any kind of relationship with Bryant is even harder to believe. But to answer your question about the NCAA, the answer is no. You lie, you get suspended for a year. Take money and other benefits, just pay it back and miss a few games. Both are wrong, but one is an athlete thinking he’s protecting himself and the other compromises the core of what the NCAA claims college football is about, amateurism (even though it makes millions and millions of dollars of these amateurs).

NCAA justice reminds me of Roman emperors. Steal some bread, twenty lashes. Make a weird face at the wrong person, I hope the lions are surprisingly gentle as they tear the limbs from your body. Well done, NCAA, well done.

Next caller…

Hank from Des Moines, IA: In what sort of devil worship did the Iowa coaches participate in order to secure our 8-0 start?

Gray: I’m not sure, but I feel certain it involved the sacrifice of at least 25% of all livestock and wheat in the state of Iowa. That might explain the good fortune behind having the 87th-ranked team in total offense and still being 8-0. And the unbelievable fortune in blocking not one, but two field goals in the final seconds against someone called Northern Iowa. And the break of a pass interference penalty, which led to a touchdown against Michigan State with no time left on the clock. And the absurd luck in being 6th in the nation in turnover margin when your own team has eleven turnovers that must be overcome.

Whatever Jobu-juju the Hawkeyes have going on is sure to run out soon unless more sacrifices are made. In fact, I saw yesterday that their starting running back is now out for the year, which is the first chink in the good fortune awarded to them by the dark prince. Well, that and their eventual burning for all of eternity.

Next up…

Terry from Florence, AL: So who’s going to be the first one to flinch, Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden?

Gray: In what has become a contest between two old men to see which one can grow the better garden that no one under the age of 55 cares about, one has finally fallen behind. Bowden now trails Paterno by 20 wins after some of his wins were taken away to due to a small matter like academic fraud (Florida State is appealing that decision and will lose since the NCAA prefers not to overrule itself). The whole process is pretty much a joke because both of these guys quit coaching around 2000 and make no attempt to pretend like their still involved in any decision-making (Have you seen either one of them wear a headset in the last 10 years?).

I would love to know what they do on a day-to-day basis. Can you see an 79-year old and an 82-year old making recruiting phone calls everyday? Or riding around on a plane for three days at a time when recruiting season really picks up? If their Cadillacs can’t make it there in two hours with someone else driving, they’re not going. For the past 8 to 10 years, they’ve been in the role of Don Corleone halfway through The Godfather. They provide the face of the program, but they’re no longer running the show. All Penn State and Florida State fans can hope for is that the family has no Fredos. Check that, it’s all Penn State fans can hope for. We already know about the Bowden Fredos.

Let’s take one more…

Jim from Columbus, OH: Boise State! Cincinnati! TCU! Iowa! How can these teams be in the top 10 of the BCS standings and THE Ohio State University is not? A two-loss Big Ten team is always better than one of these teams. What an outrage!

Gray: Yes, it’s unfortunate that a victory over Toledo doesn’t mean as much as it once did. And you would think if you didn’t leave the state of Ohio until October 3rd you’d be in a better spot. But, he does bring up an interesting point. Is a school from the SEC, Pac-10 or Big XII South (the Big XII North is not a real conference) with two losses (sorry, the Big Ten is also not a real conference) a more worthy choice for the BCS at the end of the season than an undefeated team from a smaller conference out West or from the Big East? They’ve certainly played a harder schedule and seem to be penalized for something they can’t control.

It’s an interesting argument, but to me, if you’re a good team, then you don’t lose two games or lose to a crappy team (ahem, USC). I firmly believe that any one-loss team (that didn’t lose to a bad team) from the conferences mentioned above should always be in front of the teams from smaller conferences. They should be rewarded for playing well through much tougher schedules and competing in such an aggressive athletic environment. But once you lose two, you’re done. Let’s see what these smaller conference schools can do at that point. If they get destroyed on a regular basis, then they should be cast down to the Houston and Mobile bowls.

There’s not enough history to determine if they should no longer receive opportunities. Hawaii, WAC Champions, lost to Georgia 41-10 and last season Cincinnati lost to Virginia Tech 20-7. Of course, there’s the Boise win over Oklahoma and last year Utah beat Alabama 31-17, so they’re basically 2-2 with only one really embarrassing loss and one surprisingly dominant win, which doesn’t indicate they’ll fall into a pattern of being dominated. And when USC goes to a BCS game this year, wouldn’t you rather see a team like Boise State get a shot at them rather than the annual drilling they’ll put on the runner-up Big Ten team?

From the Weekend That Was

2009-10-27T15:16:00.002-05:00

Eight weeks into the season and I think we’ve finally arrived at the point where we can all finally admit what’s been hanging over the SEC all season. No, it’s not the bad officiating. That’s been going on for years, but what can you expect from poorly trained and compensated part time employees? Or the fact that Verne Lundquist is slowly slipping into a permanent state of confusion. The cloud I’m talking about is that the SEC is a league without a complete team and full of teams that just aren’t very good. Only Alabama and Florida appear to have defenses that can make up for their offenses’ ineptitude, while everyone else has multiple flaws. But, if you look across college football, that trend shows up in every conference. College football has become a game with a plethora of mediocre teams and a small handful of good teams that, while still capable of losing to the mediocre teams, have fewer holes than everyone else and will ultimately prevail at the end of the season.

There’s a huge discussion buried in that last paragraph about what is the cause of the decline in good teams and the disappearance of dominant teams, but I don’t want to take the time to put in the research and effort to get into that discussion (I told you I was lazy). But know that we’ve entered into an era (and perhaps will always be in this era going forward) in which there are no more dominant teams and every team, even the few good ones, are fully capable of losing each week.

GAME RECAPS

Ole Miss 30, Arkansas 17
As I mentioned last week, good defenses have the ability to make one-dimensional teams play very poorly. And that’s what Ole Miss’ defense did to Arkansas. They shut down the limited Arkansas running game and put the game in Ryan Mallet’s hands and blitzed the hell out of him. He responded with a 12 of 24 (very Jevan Snead-like) showing. Yes, he did have some drops, including a dropped touchdown (which was later made up for by the ridiculous tipped pass touchdown), but he spent a lot of his time throwing on the run and with someone or someones in his face. Now, I’m no quarterback, but I do know that on NCAA 2010 when my offensive line elects not to block anyone, I have trouble passing, which makes me qualified in my criticism.

Here’s the thing about Arkansas going forward: they’re an average team at best and much closer to a bad team. Bad teams don’t play three good games in a row. Ole Miss fans experienced this during the Shrimp Boat Captain era. In 2007, Ole Miss lost 30-24 to Florida. The next week they were obliterated by Georgia 45-17. A few weeks later they lost a brutal game to Alabama 27-24. The next week Arkansas destroyed them 44-8. If you’re bad, you’re flaws will eventually come to the surface because they’re greater than your strengths. We all knew Arkansas’ defense was terrible. Sure, they played outstanding against Florida and the first half against Auburn, but anyone who has watched this team knew that wasn’t the real Arkansas defense. The real defense showed up in the second half against Auburn and on Saturday against Ole Miss. I’m sure the Hogs’ defense has a few more good quarters of play left in it, but what you saw on Saturday is the norm for this defense. They’re just not good and any offense that has a skilled quarterback and a good offensive line is more than likely going to tear this defense apart.

As of a few weeks ago, Jevan Snead could have been labeled a skilled quarterback, but certainly not a competent quarterback. Thankfully for Ole Miss, skilled and competent aligned for this game. While he still made some shaky decisions and I still don’t fully trust him, he did play like second half of 2008 Jevan Snead. Mostly good decisions, a few outstanding throws and a big drop in dump decisions. While he did throw two interceptions, I thought only one was his fault (the one before halftime was a desperation throw in a sequence of events that was highly confusing. Ole Miss wanted to kill as much time as possible while still scoring, but not turning the ball over. Only one of those three was accomplished.). If he continues to play like this and improve, Ole Miss has a chance to ascend out of mediocrity and teeter on the edge the good category because they’ll have both a good offense and a good defense, which no other team in the league currently has that combination.

Alabama 12, Tennessee 10
Alabama, after saving their best performance of the year for Ole Miss (according to Nick Saban) just like they do every year, their flaw, a suspect offense, has come into the light. I’m sure the conservative nature of their offense is due to the outstanding defense on which they lean, but after I predicted the worst quarterbacking performance in quite some time, Jonathan Crompton made me question this defense against the pass. It’s entirely possible that they relaxed late in the game and didn’t want to give up any big plays, but surrendering a 21 of 36 for 265 yards and a late touchdown to Crompton certainly raises an eyebrow. Maybe they were due for a not-so-dominating performance, but I never thought I’d live to see the day where Crompton looked like a decent quarterback against a good defense.

I actually felt sorry for Crompton after the last field goal attempt was blocked because on the play before that he threw a pass down the seam to his tight end that was the single greatest pass of his life, and he’ll never throw another one remotely close to it. I’m talking NFL-caliber, fit it in between three players and in a spot only where only his guy could catch it. It was good enough that I wanted to get an apartment with it. Unfortunately for Tennessee, he was playing about 2500% above his head. As you remember, his coaches refused to run another play after that, fearing he’d come back to reality and do something dumb, and elected to spike the ball with just a few seconds left (Kiffin claimed he chose to do that because he didn’t want the officials to call another penalty on Tennessee, which is something Lane Kiffin would do. But to be fair, he did have a small argument to be made. Eight penalties for his team to one for Alabama. However, bad teams tend to make more mistakes than good ones).

Luckily for Alabama, they only play one more team that has the players to beat them. And unluckily for them, it’s in two weeks against LSU. That’s not a lot of time to correct their offense, but the good news is that as long as their defense keeps playing well they won’t need to correct much on offense. They just need enough to get by.

South Carolina 14, Vanderbilt 10
This annual bloodbath of boredom certainly lived down to all its low expectations. I actually drifted off for about a minute while just looking at the box score. I’m a little confused as to how South Carolina managed to rack up 431 yards of total offense, commit zero turnovers and only scored 14 points. If any game deserved the JP Memorial 11:30 AM timeslot, it was this alleged game of football. I think it’s for the best to never speak of this game again.

Kentucky 36, Former Directional School 13
Speaking of games we should ignore, it’s a good idea to do so when the Sun Belt is involved. To be fair to Louisiana-Monroe, this game was played on a Saturday instead of a Tuesday, which probably resulted into some body clocks being askew.

Florida 29, Mississippi State 19
When State returned the interception for a touchdown right before half, I had visions of their game against Alabama in 2007. If you recall, that was a game in which Alabama was dominating, leading 9-0 and about to score to go up 16-0 or 12-0. Instead, John Parker Wilson threw a dumb pass and State ran it back for a touchdown and totally changed the game, which they would go on to win. So when Tim Tebow did the same thing and State cut it to 13-10, I thought that maybe State could pull off the upset. Then the second half saw the Bulldog offense flex its muscle, gaining 57 yards of offense in the fourth quarter, which began with them trailing only 16-13. And much like I mentioned earlier about Arkansas’ defense, this is the true Mississippi State offense. Some of their struggles in this game had to do with the defense they were facing, but against teams with a decent defense, their flaws will always come through more than their strengths. But as I wrote last week, take heart State fans, you’re seriously a quarterback away from pulling off one of these games.

As for Florida, it’s pretty obvious they desperately need another guy that can make plays, whether it’s a receiver or a running back that can take the pressure off of Tebow. Riley Cooper is a nice receiver but he’s not a number one receiver. If he’s your number one, passing effectively and consistently will be a problem. It’s like the movie Armageddon, which is hands down one of the top five best worst movies ever. If Ben Affleck is the star of that movie, I don’t get nearly the amount comedy or joy out of that train wreck than I do watching Bruce Willis pretend like he’s happy to be in this movie. And so it goes with Florida. Riley Cooper gets that movie in the top 15, but a compliment to Tebow gets it in the top five.

Like Alabama, Florida only plays one more team that could take advantage of its problems on offense. In three weeks, they go to Columbia to play South Carolina. The Gamecocks have the defense and enough offense to beat Florida. Granted, they’ll have to play very well on offense, but if I’m Florida we need to get our shit together on offense in a hurry.

LSU 31, Auburn 10
How bad has Auburn been in its last three games, all of which were loses? Let the following soak in:

-Chris Todd in those three games has completed 33 of 66 passes for 260 yards, 0 TDs and 2 INTs. That’s an astonishing (the bad kind) 3.94 yards per pass, which is Danny Wuerffel New Orleans Saints bad.

-The Auburn defense has surrendered an average of 409 yards a game and 32 points. Oddly enough, Mike Ditka New Orleans Saints bad.

And that is the perfect recipe for the 6-6 season that Auburn is barreling towards. I’d like to spend more time thinking about it, but right now I’d say this Auburn team has a chance to be the worst bowl eligible SEC team ever, narrowly edging out the 2008 Vanderbilt team and the 2007 Mississippi State team.

As expected, Les Miles flaunted convention and elected to pass 31 times against the league’s second worst run defense. That’s either because he’s insane (most likely) or LSU really sucks at running the ball. Actually, I take that back. They suck at offense in general. They still trail Vanderbilt in total offense and with games against Alabama and Ole Miss remaining, they may not be able to pass them. However, if their defense is actually improving and not just dominating bad offenses, then they won’t need that much offense in these last few games.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Iowa 15, Michigan State 13
These crazy bastards from Iowa are also like the movie Armageddon (I find it's best in life if you relate as many things as possible to Armageddon). They’re one of the best worst teams in recent memory. They’ve now won games by 1, 10, 11, 3, 2, 10 and 2. Their only comfortable win was over Iowa State by 32 (and strangely not Northern Iowa, beating them by 1). I don’t know how they do it, but they keep winning. Actually, I’ll attribute it to playing in the Big 10 where bad teams play competitively bad games.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Dexter McCluster, RB/WR, Ole Miss
This one was pretty easy. McCluster amassed 260 yards of total offense on 22 rushes and seven receptions, which is almost nine yards each time he touched the ball, and scored one touchdown. Arkansas had no one on the field or even a group of two or three that could slow him down. His ability to go from standing still to hyperdrive in about .3 seconds is almost unbelievable. My only concern is that if this is the Ole Miss game plan for the rest of the season, I don’t know if his body can hold up over five games at 25+ touches a game. But until that injury, I’ll enjoy the show.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Tyson Lee, QB, Mississippi State
Although it’s technically not his fault since he has no business playing quarterback in the SEC, but Lee’s showing against Florida was one of his worst. 15 of 23 for 145 yards, 0 TDs and 3 INTs. Yikes. Even Michael Henig flinched when he read that.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Houston Nutt, Ole Miss
A game which meant more to him than he would let on, Nutt got his team to finally put it all together against a team not from Conference USA or one that was not Vanderbilt. Had he not helped the offense bumble around inside the five, the score would have been even worse. There’s still a chance for Ole Miss to have a pretty good season and this win might have sent it in that direction.

2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy Leaderboard
The trophy, which gets its name from the reaction of fans when their team’s quarterback throws an interception (“Awww-shit!!!), will be awarded at the end of the year to the quarterback in the SEC who throws the most interceptions. A more prestigious award I cannot recall.

1. Jevan Snead 11
2. Jonathan Crompton 10
3. Joe Cox 9
3. Tyson Lee 9
5. Larry Smith 7
6. Mike Hartline 6

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

Ole Miss at Auburn
Can the Rebels carry on offense dominance of another bad defense? Will Chris Todd throw the ball further than eight yards? Will he even finish the game? Will Greg Hardy play in a Halloween costume?

Georgia vs. Florida
The video is several years old now, but why did the schools want to stop calling this the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party again?

South Carolina at Tennessee
Remember that whole thing I said about bad teams can’t play three good games in a row? In the past two weeks, the Vols have beaten Georgia and nearly beaten Alabama. We’ll find out if that statement holds up this week.

SEC Picks of Week 8

2009-10-23T12:30:00.001-04:00

As poor as the quality of play has been in the SEC this year, this week begins an exciting few weeks in which teams will either begin to propel themselves to the success of a warm bowl game, make preparations for another layer of clothing for a cold bowl game or meet the miserable failure of not making a bowl its fans began to fear in July. The two top teams in the league, Alabama and Florida, are steadily moving (although sometimes in really choppy steps) towards an Armageddon game in Atlanta on which the fate of the world will rest (or so CBS would want you to believe). For the rest of the teams, they’re all fighting whatever’s left. Most coveted are warm spots in Florida, the Georgia Dome or hope that it’s inexplicably 70 degrees in Dallas in January. The worst of the scraps include bone-chilling visits to Shreveport, Memphis and Nashville in December. While all bowl games are a nice trip (especially if you haven’t been in a few years), dressing like I’m going to spend the night in the Gobi Desert isn’t how I prefer to watch football games.

Made while welcoming back the rain that took a 72-hour break before getting cranked up again…

Last week: 5-1
Season: 47-8 (.855)

Arkansas at Ole Miss
In keeping with the theme of the opening paragraph, Arkansas currently sits at 3-3. They have non-conference games against Troy and Eastern Michigan, which should get them to 5-3, and they also have South Carolina and Mississippi State at home. If Arkansas were to beat Ole Miss this weekend and gain some momentum before the South Carolina game in two weeks and actually win that, they could easily be looking at 8-3 headed into the season-ending LSU game and a visit to one of those warm places. If they lose to Ole Miss, that final record could look much closer to 6-6 and a trip to Memphis or Shreveport would be in the works.

Ole Miss is 4-2 with five conference games (and Northern Arizona) left to play. And I have absolutely no idea what could happen. If they were to beat Arkansas, maybe that would send them on another scorched earth run to the end of the season, or it could simply mean that Arkansas has been playing over its head and Ole Miss could still finish 6-6. They could also lose and go on another run or finish 6-6. It’s like last year all over again, except last year they were 3-4 before laying waste to the rest of the schedule. The schedule is set up where it’s possible to finish 10-2, but this team has not shown that it’s capable of doing that. Perhaps like last year, the Arkansas game will be the start of such a run, but there’s also a great chance it will serve to show that Ole Miss still has too many holes on offense to do anything more than 7-5.

As for the game, Arkansas does one thing really well, which is passing. In fact, they average a little more than 70 yards than the number two team, Georgia, in passing offense. Although in the past three games, they’ve shown some life in the running game, going for 133, 221 and 163 (Florida, Auburn and Texas A&M, so one legitimate defense). Offensively, I expect Ryan Mallett to get some numbers. He’s too big and strong not to have a decent to good day. However, good defenses have the ability to make one-dimensional teams play very poorly and Ole Miss has a good defense. I expect Ole Miss to follow Alabama’s game plan and really get after Mallett. He’s not the fleetest of foot and when rattled tends to throw incompletions in large quantities. If the Hogs are going to win, they’ll have to have some of the ground game magic they’ve recently discovered.

For Ole Miss, they’re facing a defense that while not good, has shown flashes of being good, especially against the run. They were able to really give Florida problems because Florida is not very good at throwing. Even an average defense can make life difficult for one-dimensional offenses. So that means that if Jevan Snead hasn’t figured out what the hell he’s doing, the Rebels are going to have issues in advancing the ball forward. And the fact that this game is a pretty crucial point in the season, I’m willing to bet Snead has one half to show that he isn’t completely incompetent. If he struggles and stars throwing passes to the ground and Arkansas instead of his receivers, it could be the end of his 2009 season. The season is still salvageable for Ole Miss and Houston Nutt knows he can’t keep waiting on his quarterback to figure out where the 2008 version of himself went.

I still don’t think Arkansas is very good, especially on defense. I like Ole Miss in this one to put up just enough to get by, much like last year’s game. As long as the Rebels don’t turn it over and lean on their defense, they should come out of this one 5-2.

Tennessee at Alabama
Lane Kiffin was hired in November of 2008. Lane Kiffin just signed his contract in October of 2009. Now maybe that’s not that big of a deal, but the only other coach I can remember not signing his contract was former Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie, which ended well to quite well. And in even more crazy behavior, Kiffin allowed the Shrimp Boat Captain to convince him it would be a good idea to fly a helicopter onto the grounds of a high school game for recruiting purposes last Friday. I’ve said it before, but the sky really is the limit when it comes to absurd behavior in the Lane Kiffin era.

Unfortunately, the sky is also the limit for Jonathan Crompton’s suckiness in this game. Alabama’s defense destroys quarterbacks, even the ones that can be labeled as marginally good. As you know, Crompton isn’t very good and his performance on Saturday will be made even worse than his normal 40% completions and two to three interceptions performance. In order to keep the damage to a minimum, I expect we’ll see much of the same gameplan the Vols used at Florida. Lots of runs, a few more runs after that and some basic screen and rollout plays in which Crompton will be given his chance to show of his inaccuracy.

Tennessee’s defense will keep this one fairly close in terms of score, but there won’t be any doubt about who will win the game. Alabama dominates.

Vanderbilt at South Carolina
Much like Ole Miss, South Carolina has managed to lose its last two games against Vandy before this season. And much like Ole Miss this season, I look for South Carolina to pound Vandy further into the misery that is their 2009 season, and Vanderbilt football in general. Interestingly enough, the Commodores are currently ranked ahead of LSU in total offense. Not that it means anything in this game, but a note worth noting. Vanderbilt trudges on towards a 2007 Ed Orgeron SEC record.

Former Directional School at Kentucky
Kentucky.

Florida at Mississippi State
In order for Mississippi State to keep the curse of Starkville going against Florida, Tyson Lee and Chris Relf will need to have the best day of football they’ve ever played in their lives. And even if they achieve that, they’ll still need more if you consider that their best days ever are probably nothing more than an average quarterback performance. I think we’ll see a second straight game where the Florida offense struggles at times to move the ball, but I would be surprised if State is fortunate enough to have the Gators fumble four times like they did last week.

Even if the State defense stops being one of the worst in the conference (9th), they just don’t have enough on offense, mainly at quarterback. But that should be good news to State fans, who, after being trapped in the dark ages of the Sylvester Croom era, have legitimate hope that their team could eventually called frisky if they find a relatively skilled and competent quarterback.

Auburn at LSU
LSU’s chance to surpass Vanderbilt as the worst offense in the SEC takes a giant leap this week as the Auburn defense comes rolling into town. And even better for LSU, the Auburn rush defense is ranked 11th, which means LSU coaches will have even less incentive to allow Jordan Jefferson to throw the ball. Of course, this is Les Miles we’re talking about so I’d look for close to 45 passes from Jefferson. Hell, the backup quarterback might come in and throw 15.

LSU’s defense has shown an ability as of late to not suck as much as they were sucking. And given that Arkansas and Kentucky, who have much less talent than LSU, have shown how to stop (or in Arkansas’ case, slow down) the Auburn offense, I wouldn’t expect much out of Auburn in this game. Chris Todd stinks, their defense stinks and LSU is decent enough against the run that they’ll keep Auburn under control. So look for none of the above to happen. Except an LSU win.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK
A segment in which I take a question about college football that may or may not be from a real person.

Every reader of the Belly of the Beast writes:
“What takes longer, a Major League Baseball playoff game, Ed Orgeron winning an SEC game or you getting your two damn posts a week up?”

A fantastic question. I did about four seconds of research and have decided that all MLB playoff games average roughly eight hours and seventeen minutes to complete. I used to think baseball was not a physically taxing sport, but I have to say, standing around for eight hours would literally kill me. And listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for that long would kill my soul.

Ed Orgeron last won an SEC game as a head coach on November 25th, 2006. His next time to experience an SEC victory as a coach (not head coach) was October 10th, 2009, almost three years. And in that time span, only 2008 saw him not involved in the SEC.

As for me, it’s a miracle that I even get up two posts a week. I can’t accurately describe just how much I love to procrastinate and be lazy. Somehow, as I’ve gotten older, my attention span has gotten even smaller. If I can focus on anything for more than 11 seconds, I’m impressed with myself. What’s that shiny object over there? A piece of tin? How interesting! Oh, look, a nickel!

So to answer your question, Ed Orgeron winning an SEC game takes the longest of the three. But another couple of years and I might take the lead.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-10-20T12:29:00.004-04:00

This weekend was one of discoveries. We found out that one dominant team isn’t so dominant, one dominant team doesn’t really need its quarterback and a once hot team does indeed stink. But most importantly, we found out that, and I know I said I’d never talk about women’s basketball on here but this is too good, the 2008 WNBA champion Detroit Shock is leaving Detroit for the high-powered TV market that is, drum roll please…..Tulsa, Oklahoma!!! If we had a live satellite feed into his house, we could see NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is vigorously applauding this move right now (For those of you who don’t know what the NHL is, it was a growing league of a sport called hockey in the early 90s. It is now found on the Versus Network and ranks behind the Rodeo Clown Olympics in terms of major sports in America.). And even more bizarre than the move is that former Arkansas Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson is set to become the team’s coach and GM. Who says the WNBA is in trouble?

GAME RECAPS

Georgia 34, Vanderbilt 10
I watched about ten minutes of this game before I realized I actually wasn’t watching a public access channel and the teams I was watching were actually not high school teams. The crowd, the 60-minute barrage of incompetence and the general disinterest from everyone involved in the game made this contest one of the leading candidates for the worst game of the year. I’m sure I’ve made that claim about multiple games this season, and I will go back and get the list together, but this really was one of the worst. Had the Oklahoma/Texas game also not been so miserable, I would have only seen the 10 minutes I thought this was a high school game. I’d really like to never watch either of these teams play again the rest of the year.

Mississippi State 27, Directional School 6
Nice job by State for finally completing a game without giving the ball away in large quantities. In fact, they had zero turnovers for the game. I’ve really got nothing to say here, other than kudos to the photographer who managed to get this shot of quarterback Tyson Lee on the sidelines. He’s a little taller than I make him out to be.

Florida 23, Arkansas 20
Another masterfully, poorly officiated game in the SEC. Whether it was a bad pass interference call or a personal foul that wasn’t a personal foul, Arkansas never did catch any breaks with the bad calls. The Hogs finished with 10 penalties for 92 yards while the Gators had only three for 16 yards, which is fairly absurd. I find it hard to believe there’s ever legitimately 76 yards worth of penalties difference in any college football game. But Arkansas fans should take comfort in the statement released by the SEC yesterday in which they said, “Whoops. They shouldn’t have called that personal foul on Malcolm Sheppard.” I know that makes it all better.

Instead of a stupid apology of sorts, how about giving the schools on the receiving ends of terrible calls something they can use? Like maybe cold, hard cash to help cover their travel expenses. Or an old jalopy and a sledgehammer like they have at a fair so they can beat the living hell out of the car and their frustrations with a conference that employs part time referees and refuses to spend some of the eleventy billion dollars it makes on properly training and paying full-time officials. Or a commemorative plaque the school could hang on the wall, or throw through the wall when it actually arrives. Throw these guys a bone after you just potentially cost them large sums of money that come with going to a bowl game.

As for the playing of the game, we found out Florida’s offense really isn’t that good. They have no vertical passing game to speak of, and outside of Cooper and Hernandez, I can’t name another receiver. Yes, they did manage to hit a long pass play for their first touchdown, but that seemed to be the result of the Arkansas defensive back blowing coverage. When Florida meets a better defense than the worst one in the conference, things like that won’t happen. Of course, if Florida doesn’t turn the ball over four times (and twice inside the ten), this game probably isn’t close, but Florida has some serious questions about their passing offense. And their defense was a little shaky as well. I don’t know if that had to do with Brandon Spikes not playing most of the game, but Arkansas showed you can run right at them and they’ll struggle to stop it. If Florida and Alabama played tomorrow, Alabama would win by two touchdowns.

On the Arkansas side, Ryan Mallet really has problems against fast, aggressive defenses. Take away his 75-yard touchdown pass, which was a great throw and play by him, and he finishes 11 for 26 and 149 yards. He missed a couple of touchdowns, one to a receiver and one to a fullback, and generally seemed off all day. So future opponents (ahem, Ole Miss) take note, pressure, pressure, pressure ruins this guy’s day.

As much grief as I give the Arkansas defense, I thought they played really well. They made running the ball very hard for Florida (only average three yards a carry) and other than the long touchdown pass they gave up, did a pretty solid job against the pass. That’s two straight weeks that they’ve been able to make life very difficult for teams that rely heavily on the run. Again, Ole Miss, take note.

Ole Miss 48, UAB 13
It took six games and a defense that is one of the country’s worst, but the Ole Miss offense finally looked like a well-run operation for an entire game. Yes, they blew out Memphis and SELA, but even those games had no consistent offensive flow. I’m not sure how much of that should be attributed to UAB’s awfulness, but it was a pretty mistake-free performance by Ole Miss. Much like the State/MTSU game, there’s not much to say here. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture that represents Jevan Snead’s poor decision-making and incomplete passes, but if I did I would post it here.

Kentucky 21, Auburn 14
Welcome back to the rest of the pack known as reality, Auburn. I wrote last week that Kentucky would lose because they had the worst run defense in the SEC and Auburn would have a field day against them. This was true to a degree. Auburn did run for 220 yards, but I failed to realize that Auburn too had an atrocious run defense and that without its starting quarterback Kentucky would do nothing but run. And they did to the tune of 282 yards and had two guys that went over 100 yards.

It was a game so exciting that both teams combined for 170 yards passing, with Auburn’s Chris Todd leading the way with a 10 of 24, 80 yards and one interception showing. Again, when you hear analyst types lamenting the struggles of Todd, remember he’s not struggling, this is who he is. He stinks. I can’t emphasize this enough because in three weeks, he’s going to light Furman up and people will claim he’s getting back to form for a final push against Georgia and Alabama. Do not be fooled by this nonsense.

I mentioned penalties in the Arkansas/Florida game and I’ll mention it here. Auburn had 10 for 76 yards and Kentucky had, get this, zero for zero yards. I didn’t watch any of this game, so I have no idea if Auburn has any beef with the calls against them, but I do not believe for one second a team composed of 18-22 year old did not make one mistake all night.

And one final thought, Auburn has an outstanding chance to finish the season 6-6 after a 5-0 start. They have LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss and Furman to go. They’ll beat Furman and probably their best chance to win another is at Georgia (thanks to their offensive and defensive incompetence) and at home against Ole Miss. I doubt they win both of those and at this point I think the best they can hope for is 7-5, which is two more wins than Gene Chizik had when he started this season.

Alabama 20, South Carolina 6
As this game was ending, Todd Blackledge made a statement that he was obviously very impressed with Alabama’s defense, but would be a little concerned with a team that takes away their ability to run. And this is true. As I’ve said before, Greg McElroy is a very average SEC quarterback and he showed it in this game (10 of 20, 92 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT). But, to Blackledge’s point, does it really matter if they struggle running the ball against a good team? With the defense they have, Alabama just has to be bad at the run. If they can churn out 100 yards on the ground and have a few decent pass plays without any turnovers, they’ll win every game. I said it last week, but until you see the Alabama defense in person, you can’t appreciate how big and fast they really are.

Unfortunately for South Carolina, Alabama didn’t struggle running the ball. Mark Ingram, doing his best to become the next Darren McFadden of the SEC, ripped off 246 yards and AVERAGED 10.3 yards a carry. Had Alabama been able to mix in any success by way of the pass, they would have won by a couple of more scores.

All things considered, I thought Stephen Garcia played pretty well. He had no running game to support him and was under constant pressure, and even though he only completed 20 of 46 passes, he looked the least incompetent of any quarterback I’ve seen play Alabama. This, of course, is sad news to me because I enjoyed the irresponsible, reckless Stephen Garcia era and I think it’s now a thing of the past. I know he’ll still show a few flashes of the good ol’ days, but it won’t ever be the same again.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Purdue 26, Ohio State 18
Even though Ohio State lost to one of the many terrible Big Ten teams, it still has a legitimate chance to win the Big Ten and go to a BCS game. If they win out, which includes beating Iowa, who is currently undefeated, the Buckeyes will go to a BCS game (most likely the Rose Bowl). For the love of all things holy, is it possible to not see Ohio State in a BCS game for just one freaking year? I think as punishment for a team that has clogged more TVs with bad football than any other team I can remember, the Buckeyes should be shipped to Boise for the always cold and depressing Humanitarian Bowl. There, they’ll be out of everyone’s way, no one will have to watch their game since no one knows when that bowl game is and they might actually win a game in December or January outside the state of Ohio.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Mark Ingram, RB, Alabama
As mentioned above, Ingram destroyed the South Carolina defense and allowed Alabama to continue its march to Atlanta unscathed. While not as visually appealing and smooth as Darren McFadden, Ingram is making a push for us to get an apartment together. Seven games into the season and he’s already sitting at 900 yards and eight touchdowns. With the remaining Alabama schedule (Tennessee, LSU, State, Chattanooga and Auburn), he could easily hit 1600 yards at 15 touchdowns.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Chris Todd, QB, Auburn
To put his miserable showing in an even more miserable light, Todd averaged 3.3 yards per pass attempt, which is about as far as a small child can throw a football. For comparison, and again this was against UAB, but Jevan Snead averaged 10.9 yards per attempt on 22 tries.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Nick Saban, Alabama
This was a winner more by default than anything else, although credit was earned by Saban for dominating the team that had the last real chance to upset this Alabama team. I don’t know how he does it, but the man can really coach defense. Yes, he has outstanding talent, but even the LSU defenses of a few years ago that were loaded with NFL talent weren’t this good.

2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy Leaderboard
The trophy, which gets its name from the reaction of fans when their team’s quarterback throws an interception (“Awww-shit!!!), will be awarded at the end of the year to the quarterback in the SEC who throws the most interceptions. A more prestigious award I cannot recall.

Week 7 Standings
1. Jonathan Crompton 9
1. Jevan Snead 9
1. Joe Cox 9
4. Larry Smith 7
5. Tyson Lee 6
5. Mike Hartline 6

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

Arkansas at Ole Miss
Houston Nutt will always want revenge and Arkansas fans will always want to explain how horrible Houston Nutt is/was. Put the two together in the same state, stadium and an 11:20 AM start time and we should have some surly people.

Tennessee at Alabama
Brace yourselves for the potential worst quarterback rating in modern history when Jonathan Crompton is forced to throw 20+ times against the Alabama defense.

Florida at Mississippi State
Florida’s last three trips to Starkville resulted in fans running all over the field and tearing down anything they could get their hands on. Will the curse continue or will Tyson Lee prevent it from happening?

SEC Picks of Week 7

2009-10-15T17:17:00.003-04:00

It appears the call-in show has fallen on hard times. Call it lack of technology, effort and ability to create decent content three times a week around here, but whatever the reason, it has apparently died (and what a great two weeks it was). So in hopes of keeping the spirit of it alive, I’ve added a little more material to the weekly SEC picks. This week following the picks, you’ll find some more content. By doing this, I only have to come up with two posts a week instead of three, which is a royal pain in the ass (or so I’ve heard from those who actually do post three times a week), and now you’ll get two lengthy, mildly well-thought-out posts a week. And if you were counting, this week’s weekend recap came in at a whopping 2800 words, which should never happen again. Reading 2800 words on three-day old news is absurd. On to the picks…

Made while enjoying ESPN’s unintentional tribute to Sean Connery’s finest work on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy.

Last week: 4-3
Season: 42-7 (.857)

Georgia at Vanderbilt
Congratulations to Georgia for successfully wrestling away the 12th spot in scoring defense from Arkansas. It was quite an effort they put up last week against Tennessee and now thanks to that effort, Hog fans can now claim there is one defensive category in which they are not last. I’d like to see Georgia catch Arkansas for worst total defense, but with the Bulldogs facing a trapped-in-a-coma Vanderbilt offense and the Hogs facing Florida, I don’t think it will happen. Yet.

Anyway, as for the actual game being played here, Vanderbilt has revealed itself to be absolutely horrible, at least on offense. Their defense has a little feistiness in it, but unless it learns to score, the Commodores have no hope. As awful as Georgia has become, they’ve got more to offer than Vandy. I look for a depressing, sloppy, miserable game, perfectly fitting of the old Jefferson Pilot time slot. If only Dave Rowe could replace Andre Ware and be with his old buddy Dave Neal, it would be just like old times. Georgia wins, yet keeps its fans in the spiral of depression known as the 2009 season and boosts liquor sales across the state of Georgia.

Mississippi State at Directional School
Thanks to the last three games, Mississippi State has come out of nowhere to challenge Georgia for the last spot in the turnover margin department. Georgia has an impressive total of -11, but State is closing fast at -8. It’s another thrilling race in failure between two bad teams.

I know almost nothing about MTSU (there’s a zero percent chance I’m going to ever type that out). I can tell you they’re in the Sun Belt, they recently lost to Troy and former Auburn offense coordinator Tony Franklin is now employed there. I have no idea if Troy is good (I say no) and couldn’t say how Franklin is doing in running the offense. What I do know is that despite Tyson Lee’s tendency to destroy his team’s chances of winning through turnovers and lack of skill, it shouldn’t matter here. If last year’s atrociously coached team could bumble its way through a win over this team, I say this year’s better-coached version should be able to do the same. If not, welcome to a 2-10 season Bulldogs.

Arkansas at Florida
There seems to be a belief this week that since Arkansas defeated an unbeaten Auburn team they must be turning some sort of imaginary corner toward being a good team this season. I am here to tell you that when you beat an average, overrated team at home, you are not turning a corner because you still stink. Last time I checked Arkansas is still horrible on defense. Unless they suddenly got faster and less terrible in the past few days, I’m pretty sure they’re still bad. Throttling a Chris Todd-led offense does not make you a good defense. Let’s keep that in mind going forward.

Remember what Alabama’s defense did to this Arkansas offense a few weeks ago? Expect more of the same slapping around to go on this week. Florida’s defense, which is probably not as good as Alabama’s but is still outstanding (sort of like the difference between Wendy’s regular chicken sandwich and the spicy chicken sandwich), currently is number one in the SEC in total defense (yes, I am aware I just made one claim then used stats that go against that claim, but whatever) and I expect they’ll give Mallett and company all sorts of problems, namely keeping him upright.

Even with the recently stagnant Florida offense due to their desire to prevent more “brain shakeage” (actual phrase used by an ESPNU analyst) in Tim Tebow’s head, they shouldn’t have much trouble putting up points. Florida cruises.

UAB at Ole Miss
How about we not talk about Ole Miss for one week? Since our scheduling debacle has prevented us from having an off-week, let’s just use this time to take one. Ole Miss will win, but I doubt any confidence will be restored.

Kentucky at Auburn
All you need to know about this game is that Kentucky is the worst defense in the league against the run. That should let you know that Auburn is going to have a field day against the Wildcats. I’m just disappointed we won’t be able to see any Mike Hartline interceptions since he’s out with an injury. Perhaps when he returns he’ll put on a strong show for everyone. Auburn wins.

South Carolina at Alabama
This has the potential to be an interesting game. Alabama is coming off a systematic destruction of Ole Miss, their first serious conference test of the year, and have to be feeling pretty good about themselves, which is always a dangerous thing in college football. South Carolina has sort of been flying below everyone’s radar and currently sits 5-1 and a winner of four straight. Stephen Garcia is threatening to jump into the category labeled “good quarterbacks” and the Gamecock defense can be labeled as good now that they’ve corrected the problems from the Georgia disaster.

Two things could make this game not interesting. One, if Alabama maintains its machine-like execution and mental state. If they come prepared and without high opinion of themselves, they will dominate. They’ve got better players, especially their defense matching up with the South Carolina offense, and don’t make mistakes. And two, if South Carolina’s performance against Kentucky was not because they were overlooking them but because they really aren’t that good. A two-point win at home over Kentucky is not an indication of a good team.

I think South Carolina will keep this one interesting a little longer than expected. Much like the Ole Miss game, Alabama’s offense will have an easier time moving the ball on South Carolina’s defense than the Gamecocks’ offense on Alabama’s defense (not that any of it will be easy). Even if South Carolina makes it really close, do you have any faith in Stephen Garcia against a good, aggressive defense? I know that I don’t. Alabama wins.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK
A segment in which I take a question about college football that may or may not be from a real person.

Ricky from Alabama writes:
“Can we get some sort of hierarchy as far as the teams in the SEC go this season?”

Well, I certainly hope this is the Ricky from the video involving a battered dining room table and a grown man carrying a shaker inside a house. If so, I’m assuming he learned the word hierarchy from “the TV.” Anyway, as I see it, here’s how the SEC breaks down. And there are no rankings within each section.

GOOD TEAMS
Florida
Alabama

POTENTIALLY GOOD TEAMS
South Carolina

AVERAGE TEAMS
LSU

BELOW AVERAGE TEAMS THAT PROBABLY STINK
Auburn
Ole Miss
Tennessee
Arkansas
Georgia
Mississippi State

TEAMS THAT STINK
Vanderbilt
Kentucky

Only Florida and Alabama can beat everyone and no team can beat them. Everyone else can beat everyone else, except Vandy and Kentucky who can only beat each other. I’m not sure any of that made sense. But what all of this nonsense does mean is that it’s been a pretty bad year for SEC football. Not many great matchups and just a horde of not good teams playing each other in not very good games. I don’t know if this explosion of incompetence is due to a lack of quarterback skill, but that seems to me the most logical explanation.

Tim Tebow and Jevan Snead were the only two successful, talented and experienced quarterbacks in the conference coming into this year (and we see how Snead has turned out). Everyone else was new or terrible. At this point, you can say only Tebow, Greg McElroy, Chris Todd (who should start to some back to earth), Stephen Garcia and Ryan Mallet could be called successful right now. That’s less than half the conference trotting out anything good behind center, and by the end of the year I think that number will be even smaller (I’m looking at you Chris Todd and Stephen Garcia). I really noticed it last year, but if you don’t have anything competent playing quarterback, then you’re going to struggle, like so many SEC teams are this year. I hope this crap gets corrected next year because I’m tired of watching so many bad teams.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-10-13T15:15:00.001-04:00

After a weekend spent with rain, mist, cold, little to no sunshine, a football team falling apart faster than an Ed Orgeron recruiting class, two fantasy football teams that can’t do anything right, incorrectly picking SEC games and an immediate regret from reintroducing Krystal to my body, I’d like someone with connections to place a phone call to the Pacific Northwest and tell them to come take their weather back. This is getting ridiculous. I’d like to see the sun before December starts.

GAME RECAPS

Arkansas 44, Auburn 23
That loud sound you heard early Saturday afternoon was not the collapse of the Ole Miss house of cards (that actually came later in the afternoon), but reality colliding headfirst with the Auburn bandwagon. As predicted, the Arkansas offense obliterated the Auburn defense and got just enough out of their defense to remind everyone that Auburn, while better than last year, isn’t that good.

The Hogs ran up 495 yards of total offense, held the ball for over 38 minutes and at one point led 34-3. If they had any form of defense, they would have won this one by an even larger margin. But give credit to the Auburn offense for finally recognizing that Arkansas’ defense is terrible and they were able to at least make it an interesting game headed into the fourth quarter.

The absurdity of Chris Todd being considered a good quarterback finally came into the light for the masses that really believed in him. A 15 of 28 for 133 yards and 0 TDs, while averaging an outstanding 4.8 yards per pass attempt, performance should be enough to remind even the most blind loyalist that this was Chris Todd we’ve been talking about all season, not Joe Montana (by the way, is Joe Montana a dated reference now? He was just the first guy that popped in my head. I really think he might be. Anyway, Chris Todd would be along the lines of a Jay Schroeder.).

Fortunately for Auburn, Kentucky comes to town next weekend and that should get them at least bowl eligible this year, which I never thought would happen, and they’ll be able to get away with Todd playing another game at quarterback. I’ll be interested to see how this Auburn offense plays the rest of the year now that Arkansas has shown teams that have defensive talent how to defend Auburn.

As for Arkansas, this was a huge win for them. They’re sitting at 3-2 with Florida, Ole Miss and South Carolina coming up in three of their next four games. They won’t beat Florida, Ole Miss is certainly a winnable game, but road games in the SEC are always hard, and South Carolina will thoroughly enjoy playing against that awful defense. If they had lost this game, they’d be looking at 2-3 with three really tough games coming up. Now a bowl game is almost a certainty, barring a collapse, and they have another seven weeks with which to lecture Ole Miss fans on the shortcomings of Houston Nutt.

Army 16, Vanderbilt 13
Ole Miss’ lone conference win came against a team that was beaten by a team whose other two wins were over Ball State and Eastern Michigan.

Tennessee 45, Georgia 19
I don’t know where the real Jonathan Crompton went but his rental is due back tomorrow by noon. In a performance that shook me to my core, Rental Jonathan Crompton went 20 of 27 for 310 yards and four touchdowns. But just to throw everyone off the scent that this might not actually be Jonathan Crompton, the rental version did throw one interception. This offensive output by Tennessee give Arkansas fans legitimate material with which to argue that Georgia’s defense, not theirs, is the worst in the conference. I heard this score in the bathroom at the Ole Miss game and assumed the guy who reported it was a fifth deep in Kentucky Gentleman or whatever cheap brand of whiskey that was oozing out of him.

And for everyone but Georgia fans’ entertainment, Joe Cox has thrown his hat in the ring for the worst quarterback in the league and is putting up a strong effort for the 2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy (I’ll be unveiling this later in this post) with another two interceptions. Unfortunately for the rest of us, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll get to watch Cox disappoint the Bulldog faithful. Surely he’s nearing the end of Mark Richt’s patience with him and a change will be coming soon (Richt, by the way, is reeking of mediocrity). For my benefit, I hope he hangs around.

As for Tennessee, they’ll get to enjoy this win for another two weeks before going to Alabama and ending what tiny shred of confidence Crompton had built for himself. I suspect we’ll get another Florida-like gameplan from the Vols in that one, but I fully expect a handful of poor to quite poor decisions.

South Carolina 28, Kentucky 26
Our first casualty for the Awww-Shit Trophy, Mike Hartline is out for a few weeks with a knee injury. Hopefully, he’ll return and make a solid late season push to claim the trophy for which he was the leading candidate.

Houston 31, Mississippi State 24
Another four turnovers for the Mississippi State offense and another game the Bulldogs had a great chance to win. As expected State pounded away at Houston, rushing for 330 yards, and, as expected, gave up eight miles of passing yards on defense. I can’t name a single player in State’s secondary but I can believe that counting yourself and the next three people you see, the four of you would have close to the same results as State’s secondary is currently producing. To their credit, they did intercept two passes, a feat that I don’t think you and three friends could match, but you could certainly get one.

With a defense that bleeds yards and points, a two-win season is still a possibility for this State team. If they can beat Middle Tennessee State on Saturday, I can see them getting to four, possibly five, wins. If not, this could be one of the most competitive two-win teams ever.

Alabama 22, Ole Miss 3
Remember what happened to all those people in Jonestown that drank the kool-aid? They died. And for all those, including myself, who so readily swilled the Ole Miss kool-aid even when a lifetime of experience said not to, we are now all dead. Dead to Atlanta. Dead to any hope for the rest of the season. Dead to anything but our standard third to sixth place finish in the SEC West. It is our lot in life and to think otherwise is just stupid.

Now that my soul is numb, let’s talk about this game. If you haven’t seen Alabama play in person, you really don’t have a good feel for just how fast they are on defense. Oh, and they’re really big up front too. Fast and big makes it really hard to have much success on offense. They pushed Ole Miss’ offensive line around, shut down the running game and although they never sacked Jevan Snead, they did hit and harass him into a performance for the record books (the bad kind of record books). The last time I saw an offense that helpless was when the Shrimp Boat Captain hung his Red Bull on the shoulders of Seth Adams and Brent Schaeffer. To put it in perspective, the BancorpSouth Play of the Game on the JumboTron was a seven yard run by Enrique Davis, which helped lead to our lone score.

One of the startling differences in the game for me was between the two quarterbacks. Alabama’s Greg McElroy is an average college quarterback, but he doesn’t make mistakes and understands his defense is his best friend. But what really stands out between him and Snead is that he isn’t afraid or nervous in the pocket. He knows that he’s going to get hit on some plays, but he stands in, delivers the throw and takes the hit. It’s what all quarterbacks must learn to do if they want to have any kind of success.

Jevan Snead doesn’t play that way. He doesn’t like to stand in the pocket, he starts dancing around as soon as he gets the first sign the defense is closing in and rarely does he step into a throw and get a good delivery on the ball. I’m not sure exactly why that is, maybe he doesn’t trust his offensive line, maybe he’s always looking to make a big play or maybe he stinks. People seem to believe the real Snead is the one we saw in the last six games of 2008 and not the guy in the first seven games. Well, what if he is the guy from the first seven games last year? Maybe the fake Snead is the guy who played out of his mind at the end of 2008. Seriously, what has he shown this year that reminded you of late 2008? Other than the first half of the Vandy game and a few sporadic moments against Memphis and SELA, I can’t recall anything.

Now the big question is how much longer does Snead get to prove that he is the guy from the end of last year? Obviously he’ll start against UAB, but the following week we play Arkansas and that’s a game that should be won. If he struggles through the first half then, I have a hard time seeing any reason to keep him on the field. His incompletions hurt, making the offense stagnant and such, but it’s his turnovers that are absolute killers. He has to take a page from Greg McElroy’s book if he wants to keep playing quarterback at Ole Miss.

Moving along to the next target, I choose you, Ole Miss offensive line. Actually, as far as pass blocking goes, I thought they played okay. Not great, but they were serviceable considering the defense they were facing. Bradley Sowell took another step in making up for his comments after the South Carolina game, looking much less like a matador and more like an actual offensive lineman. As far as run blocking though, they were dominated. I’m sure some of it had to do with Alabama not being afraid of Snead’s ability to throw incompletions, which means they could stack eight or nine guys near the line, but even so, you expect to get a few decent runs instead of about zero.

The only bright spot for the day, and most likely the only one for the season, was the Ole Miss defense. It’s typical Ole Miss that we’ll end up wasting what has to be one of, if not the, best defenses in the history of the school. That group was simply unbelievable when you look at what they accomplished on Saturday. Alabama had six scoring drives and FOUR OF THEM STARTED IN OLE MISS TERRITORY thanks to offensive and/or special teams buffoonery. And one of those four started at the Ole Miss four. As in four yards away from the end zone. They gave up 22 points out of the bag of shit they were constantly handed, and this was to an offense averaging 40 points a game. If not for their effort (and I read today that Alabama ran 78 plays, which makes their effort even more amazing), this game would have looked something like 48-3. I hope they gave a collective punch to the offense’s man parts after the game.

So can Ole Miss pull this season out of the freefall that’s headed towards terminal velocity if things continue as they are? It all depends on whatever is going on offensively. If we can become an average, ball control offense that relies on our defense, perhaps eight or nine wins is not out of the question. We still have the easiest schedule in the conference and have two more sure wins (I think) in UAB and Northern Arizona, and it’s not unreasonable to think that out of the last five conference games (three of which are at home) this team could win four, so eight or nine wins is doable. But I also thought going to Atlanta was doable.

One final thing here, just so I’m perfectly clear, ALABAMA IS A GOOD TEAM. THEY WILL BE PLAYING IN ATLANTA AND POSSIBLY IN A VERY IMPORTANT GAME BEYOND THAT. I AM AN IDIOT FOR NOT ONLY PICKING OLE MISS TO WIN THIS GAME BUT ALSO TO GO TO ATLANTA. I REGRET MY STUPIDITY.

Florida 13, LSU 3
Luckily for Ole Miss, LSU provided the worst offensive performance of the day. 162 yards of total offense, 77 of which came on the drive that produced a field goal. I am already excited about the defensive orgy that awaits everyone when Ole Miss and LSU play.

I was only able to see the second half of this game, but from what I saw I thought Florida played very conservatively, partly to protect a concussed Tim Tebow and partly because they knew LSU wasn’t going anywhere on offense. In defense of Jordan Jefferson and LSU, at least he (and they) did not rack up five turnovers, a blocked punt and surrender a first down off a fake punt. Had they, maybe they too would have lost 22-3.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Iowa 30, Michigan 28
As I understand it, Iowa was ranked 12th, undefeated and facing a Michigan team fresh off a loss to mighty Michigan State. Michigan was also on the road playing with two freshmen quarterbacks and turned the ball over five times. And yet, when Iowa won the game, what did its fans do? Let out a huge gasp? Curse the team for putting them through all that crap? Treat the hypothermia they were probably experiencing from freezing their asses off for over three hours? No, they did none of these (well, not sure about the hypothermia). Rather, they charged the field. Seriously. Ranked, undefeated and they all ran out on the field to celebrate beating a one-loss, shitty, led-by-freshmen Michigan team. Yet another reason why the Big Ten sucks.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Jonathan Crompton, QB, Tennessee
Surely you jest, Gray. Crompton? I know, I’m as stunned as you are. I was convinced he wouldn’t throw four touchdowns the rest of the year and he somehow got four in this game. And threw for 300 yards. Odds are he’ll never be seen in this space again, but for at least one week Tennessee fans don’t want to literally kill him.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Jevan Snead, QB, Ole Miss
A 2 for 12 first half performance set the stage for this week’s winner. Snead finished 11 of 34 for 140 yards, 0 TDs and 4 INTs. It was an epic failure. In his defense, two of the interceptions were not his fault, but the other two were so bad they should have counted as two each. I’d like to think this is the last time we’ll see Snead in this spot, but I also like to think I’m going to win the Tennessee lottery.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Nick Saban, Alabama
Going into what was billed the biggest test yet for his team, Saban’s team, namely his defense, plowed through Ole Miss on its way to a dominating 22-3 win. The next challenge for Saban is to see that no one is injured before reaching Atlanta in December.

2009 SEC Awww-Shit Trophy Leaderboard

A new feature added to the weekend wrap-up. This is simply a way to keep track of the quarterbacks of the SEC and their interception totals. The trophy, which gets its name from the reaction of fans when their team’s quarterback throws an interception (“Awww-shit!!!), will be awarded at the end of the year to the quarterback who throws the most interceptions. A more prestigious award I cannot recall.

Week 6 Standings
1. Jonathan Crompton 9
1. Jevan Snead 9
3. Joe Cox 8
4. Mike Hartline 6
4. Tyson Lee 6
4. Larry Smith 6

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

South Carolina at Alabama
Another chance for Nick Saban to show that he consumes offenses with the ease that Jerrell Powe shows while working his way through catfish baskets.

Arkansas at Florida
I’ll be looking to see if Florida shuts down the Arkansas offense with the same degree of efficiency as Alabama.

UAB at Ole Miss
The Nathan Stanley watch has begun.

SEC Picks of Week 6

2009-10-09T00:59:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the second straight week without the call-in show, but technical difficulties prevented it from getting posted. And by technical difficulties, I mean I was too lazy to do it. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to come up with the questions and the answers? I can barely do one, much less two.

Anyway, these picks were made while hoping the Missouri/Nebraska weather doesn't find its way to Oxford.

Last week: 7-0
Season: 38-4 (.905)

Auburn at Arkansas
The first of some potentially really good games in the SEC this week. Here we have two offenses that are lighting it up (save for Arkansas’ showing against Alabama) and two defenses that are helping opposing offenses light up the yardage and points categories. Usually when a collision of this nature happens, we get a Georgia/Arkansas type game from earlier this year. But the one thing I notice about this matchup is that Arkansas actually has a decent run defense (7th in the SEC), and if you’ve watched Auburn, their offense is based on running the ball. Now, you can point out that Auburn has the second best passing offense in the SEC and Arkansas has the worst pass defense, but I would argue that Auburn’s passing game in a beneficiary of a great running game and a multitude of piss poor defenses (which Arkansas admittedly is).

So what does all that mean? I think Arkansas has the ability to load up and challenge Auburn’s ability to run the ball. It’s entirely possible that Arkansas’ run defense is actually rated higher than it is because everyone elects to pass on them, but their best chance of winning this game is to dare Chris Todd and his mediocre arm to beat them. Let’s all remember that Chris Todd stinks. I don’t care what his stats say, he stinks. The more times he has to throw, the better Arkansas’ chances are.

On the other side, Auburn’s defense does nothing well. They’re 9th against the run and 10th against the pass. And they’re about to run into a competent quarterback and a well-coached offense. Barring a West Virginia-esque six turnover game, the Arkansas offense is going to blow the Auburn defense apart (actually, West Virginia blew them apart as well, but the turnovers made it much less abusive). And that’s why I’m taking the Hogs in this one. I think they have a better shot at stopping the one thing Auburn has to do in order to have a successful offense. Arkansas can get away without having much by way of the run, but Auburn cannot.

Vanderbilt at Army
Remember about three paragraphs ago when I mentioned all of the potentially great games in the SEC? This is not one of them. I think this game ties the Vandy/Rice game as worst game of the year so far. Let’s go nuts, I’ll take Vandy here.

Georgia at Tennessee
Interesting note about this game, Tennessee is actually four spots higher in total offense than Georgia (6th to 10th). I think some of that may have to do with the Vols feasting on Western Kentucky and Ohio while Georgia took on Oklahoma State and Arizona State. Because no one in their right minds would believe Tennessee has more competent on offense than Georgia. No one. As pitiful as Joe Cox can be, Jonathan Crompton is virtually untouchable in his lack of quarterbacking skill. If only Wesley Carroll were still in the league, then we could have a debate.

Anyway, from everything I’ve read this week, the consensus seems to be that this is a game Tennessee should win. To that I say why? What has Tennessee shown that makes anyone think they can win this game? Let’s look at games against non-completely shitty teams, of which Tennessee has only played three (UCLA, Florida and Auburn). In these three games, the Vols have put up a whopping 16.7 points a game, which fits right in with the Ed Orgeron era at Ole Miss. Georgia, by contrast, has not played a shitty team and averages 27.2 points a game.

Yes, Georgia’s defense has been awful, but some of that goes to the quality of teams they’ve played and their offense leading the way to a -9 turnover margin (worst in the SEC). But the Bulldog defense is good enough to limit bad offenses like they did to LSU’s last week. Tennessee does offer a better defense (although nothing spectacular), but if they can’t score they can’t win. There’s no way I can pick a team with an offense this bad unless they have an outstanding defense, which they don’t. Georgia wins.

Kentucky at South Carolina
Steve Spurrier is 16-0 against Kentucky. Do you think he’s going to lose to Mike Hartline? Pretty easy pick here. Something I did want to talk about which was brought up in the comments section of the last post on here was the absurd celebration penalties called in the Georgia/LSU game last week.

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said at a speaking event this week that he’s “just never felt that a public hanging in the square" will make better officials. This is true, Mike. But you know what will make better officials? Hiring ones that don’t suck.

Houston at Mississippi State
Houston can’t stop anything, nor can Mississippi State to a lesser degree. However, a few weeks ago, this game looked like Houston would embarrass yet another team outside of Conference USA. Now, not so much. If someone no one has ever heard of on a team barely recognizable slashes Houston for over 260 yards on the ground, what might a running team like Mississippi State do with allegedly better talent? If I'm Dan Mullen, I don't let the two-headed monster of Tyson Lee and Chris Relf throw more than 12 passes and I make sure each of my top three running backs each get 20 carries. This way, State can control the clock and keep Houston from throwing for Texas Tech-versus-the-Ole Miss-4-2-5-defense-in-2003 yardage (which was an NCAA record at the time) because State has the pass defense that could give up numbers like that. State may also get the benefit of some rain, which should make it harder for Houston to throw. I don't think it will be the flood-like rain currently happening in Columbia right now, but a little bit can always help.

I'd like to take State here, but their turnover problems in the past few games (they're also 10th in the SEC in penalties) and the overwhelming fact that Tyson Lee and/or Chris Relf will be prominently involved in this game are forcing me into Houston. I don't think State will be able to stop Houston at all and State should rack up some points as well, but those two guys will do something that will lead to the loss. But take heart State fans, it's almost unbelievable how much better coached this team is than those under the Sylvester Croom era. If this year's team played last year's, they'd win by three touchdowns. While both coaches and players still make plenty of mistakes and I don't know if Mullen (or any coach) will break the mold of inexperienced coaches having no success in bad situations, but at least you have a chance now.

Alabama at Ole Miss
The game that was set up to be an Armageddon game between two top five teams until Ole Miss lost to another SEC team on the road on a Thursday night by six points and was declared one of the most overrated teams in the country. Now, it's just a top three team taking on a top 20 team. Yawn. Seriously, Ole Miss should just give up. The same people who told them how great they were have now told them that they are actually terrible, and we all know those people are really, really smart and well-informed.

Here's what's at stake in this game: If Alabama wins, they essentially eliminate Ole Miss from contention in the West and prove they can beat a team with a good defense, which they have not done this season (I refuse to acknowledge Virginia Tech as a good defense because they aren't. They're 47th in the country in total defense). If Ole Miss wins, they're in real contention in the West (not that they aren't now) even though they've been left for dead and it proves to them and to everyone else that they can beat everyone in the West. If Alabama loses, they're still in the race. Yeah, one loss hurts, but I think they'd still be one of the favorites to win. If Ole Miss loses, they're done in the West with two conference losses and there's a chance the season could start to spiral out of control.

What all my inane gibberish means is that this game means much, much more to Ole Miss than it does to Alabama. That doesn't mean Alabama isn't going to play hard and be really average, but Ole Miss knows a successful season is on the line. Never count out what a sense of urgency can do for a team. And then there's the "nobody believes in us" factor, which is right in Houston Nutt's wheelhouse. You think he's going to milk that for all it's worth? A sense of urgency and an "us against the world" attitude can go a long way when a game of this magnitude comes along.

Leaving the mental game, let's move to the actual playing of the game. Alabama's offense has pretty much dominated everyone they've faced this year. But, as I mentioned earlier, that's come against some pretty bad defenses (although Kentucky does bring the pain at number 61). Ole Miss is currently ranked 16th in total defense and will make things much harder on them. I doubt they'll be able to run very well and will be forced to throw much more than they want, which, as well as Greg McElroy has played, benefits Ole Miss. An inexperienced quarterback on the road, facing a legitimate defense, carrying the offense because of a lack of a run game, is a definite positive for Ole Miss. Unfortunately for Ole Miss, that's where the good news sort of ends. Alabama's defense is really good. They've dominated everything that's come their way and a mistake-prone quarterback is just what they'd want.

Jevan Snead has to, I mean HAS TO, tap his end of 2008 self or there's no chance for Ole Miss. All of these dumb passes he's so fond of making need to go away. And in order to aid him in his decision making, the offensive line must pass block with a high degree of success. If not, we'll see something like the South Carolina game again, except much worse. However, I believe Ole Miss will have a little more success on offense than everyone is probably anticipating. This may be the first game in which Alabama's defense really feels the loss of Dont'a Hightower. The guy was a freak with his size and speed and could play linebacker or be used as a rush end. I'm sure Cory Reamer is a nice player but a freak he is not. When Hightower is in there, an offense has to worry about him and Rolando McClain, not that the other Crimson Tide defenders are slouches, but those two guys are destructive machines. It's much easier to worry about one than two.

So after plowing through all that you already knew, who's the pick here? Call it a hunch, call it putting way too much stock in the "season is on the line" and the "nobody believes in us" attitude, I'm taking Ole Miss. I think the defense will keep them in the game with their ability to limit Alabama's offense, which I'm not totally buying, and I think they'll get just enough on offense and ride the emotional wave I spent something like 250 words talking about. This may be a moronic homer pick, but I think they've got enough to pull it off.

Florida at LSU
Tebow-watch sort of reminds me of panda-watch in Anchorman. Everyone's eagerly waiting the news and throwing out their uninformed opinions, but no one knows anything. On Friday night, I fully expect a reporter giving a live report to turn around and yell to no one in particular that Tebow needs to show his face and call him a Tebow-jerk (I looked for the video so all the people who have no idea what I'm talking about wouldn't think I'm crazy. But if you don't know what I'm talking about, it means you haven't seen Anchorman and are therefore an idiot. So I have no problem with you assuming I'm crazy.).

Anyway, I don't think it really matters if Tebow plays or not because I think Florida will win either way. LSU's offense and defense are way too suspect to even consider an upset here. LSU's only chance will come if Florida turns the ball over four or five times. That many turnovers will be necessary because a Jordan Jefferson-lead offense will need as many chances as possible. Florida's defense should dominate and whatever they get on offense will be enough to win this one.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-10-06T12:44:00.001-04:00

A perfect week five and the first time I’ve managed to pull off the perfect week this season. It’s a trend that I can assure you won’t keep going. So before I screw it up, let’s move on to what happened over the weekend.

GAME RECAPS

Alabama 38, Kentucky 20
Alabama certainly showed they could run the ball, pounding Kentucky into dust to the tune of 204 yards. From what I saw, the Tide came out with a strategy to destroy Kentucky on the ground and wait for the Wildcats to turn the ball over, which they did four times. Mike Hartline, who has thrown his name into the running for SEC interceptions leader with six on the year (his competitors include: Joe Cox-6, Jevan Snead-5 and Jonathan Crompton-8), was about as awful as you could imagine a below average quarterback playing against a good defense to be. I was only able to see the first half and the best description I could come up with for Hartline was that his performance made JaMarcus Russell look sharp.

With the way Kentucky and Vanderbilt are playing, would everyone be okay with just going ahead and canceling that game? No one deserves to be subjected to that hell, even the fans of both schools. Yes, I know that game is over a month away, but what else I am supposed to say about Kentucky? There’s only so many ways you can say someone stinks.

LSU 20, Georgia 13
Has the paint finished drying yet? Or has the grass reached three inches yet? If not for the final minutes, this would be in the running for the worst game I’ve ever watched. Both offenses were horrible, which is made worse since both defenses have not played very well this season, both quarterbacks lived up to their average-to-below-average status and incompetence reigned throughout the game. I mentioned last week that these teams were almost identical statistically and that’s exactly what we got, two teams that were very good at playing bad and boring football.

A week after Anthony Dixon ran through LSU’s defense, Georgia followed up with an outstanding 45 yards on the ground. That’s just 12 yards more than Charles Scott’s 33-yard touchdown run that won the game. And Joe Cox spent the better part of his afternoon throwing incompletions. If not for A.J. Green, how bad would Cox be? A short, average-arm quarterback without a receiver that’s almost undefendable. Now, I say this knowing nothing about Georgia’s depth at quarterback, and I find it’s always more fun to make ridiculous claims without knowing anything about a situation, but I think we’re getting close to the time they need to take a look at someone else. In the next two weeks, they play Tennessee and Vanderbilt, which would be a perfect time to give some playing time to QB number two, especially Vandy. If not then, perhaps after Florida blows them apart at the end of October.

Ole Miss 23, Vanderbilt 7
I know Vanderbilt stinks, but Ole Miss did what allegedly good teams do to bad teams, they dominate them. Even though Vandy had a few moments of feistiness, especially after a Snead interception that led to a touchdown, I never once thought they had a chance to even get back in the game, much less win it. I was looking for dominant offensive line play, which we got (and a kudos to Bradley Sowell for gaining a fraction of a percent of redemption), I wanted another outstanding defensive performance, got that too, and I wanted Jevan Snead to not play like an idiot, and we got a half check mark there.

In the first half, Snead played like November 2008 through January 2009 Jevan Snead. He carved up Vandy’s pass defense, which was second in the conference coming into this game. Then the second half started. Passes started being thrown to no one in particular, except Vandy defenders, and the offense started to grind to a halt. Had we not been able to run the ball, things might have been a little dicier in the second half. But a win is a win, and that it didn’t come in excruciating fashion is good enough for me in this annual battle of mediocrity.

South Carolina 38, South Carolina State 14
A moral victory for the MEAC as SC State was only down 10-7 at half.

Georgia Tech 42, Mississippi State 31
A game pregnant with Mississippi State turnovers and Georgia Tech passing yards, which I’m sure no one expected. For the second straight year, Mississippi State was able to rack up some offensive yards (and this year they even scored), but turnovers killed them again. State is now -6 in the turnover margin department, ranking only ahead of Georgia in the SEC. And the interesting thing about all their turnovers is that only six of them have come as a result of the magical arms of Tyson Lee and Chris Relf, which I find unbelievable. I had that duo penciled in for at least 10 by this point in the season. The Bulldogs have now lost eight fumbled on the year and have a stellar nine turnovers in the last two games.

If you’re wondering why I’m rambling on about all these turnovers, it’s because they have kept State from a potential 4-1 start and I didn’t see any of this game at all so I have nothing to really discuss. I can tell you that Georgia Tech quarterback Josh Nesbitt had thrown for just 446 yards coming into this game, and during this game he threw for 266, which is about 60% of his previous total. I’m no mathematician, but I can tell you State’s pass defense stinks.

Arkansas 47, Texas A&M 19
Coach Sherman,

If you could go ahead and clean up your office for Coach Tuberville’s arrival in December, that would be great. Thanks a bunch.

Sincerely,

Everyone at Texas A&M

Auburn 26, Tennessee 22
A few things we learned from this game:

1. Auburn’s defense still stinks. 400 yards to Tennessee? That’s Jonathan Crompton throwing the ball around, not Rick Clausen. Wait, I mean Casey Clausen. No, that’s still not right. Tee Martin? No, someone else. Who was the guy who won a lot of games, but never could beat Florida? Ah, yes. Peyton Manning is the guy I wanted to name.

2. This was Crompton’s first game of the year NOT to throw an interception. It only took five weeks, but we made it. And what’s more impressive is that he threw 43 times.

3. Defenses are usually better when they aren’t missing five starters, like Tennessee’s. Auburn has far exceeded any expectations I had for them, but I’m not ready to buy into this team yet. Wake me up when they play a team with a legitimate (or uninjured) defense and a competent offense.

4. Gene Chizik has now doubled his career win total. He began the season at five and is all the way up to ten. Never in a million years would I have believed that.

5. The Lane Kiffin and Ed Orgeron experience has been a little disappointing in terms of buffoonery and general coaching stupidity. However, with the recent dismissal of wide receiver Brandon Warren (who got in a shouting match with an assistant) and the losses that will start mounting, I expect things to really take off in the next few weeks.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

UTEP 58, Houston 41
I love watching Houston’s offense. It’s sort of a take-off on Mike Leach’s offense at Texas Tech (I can’t remember the assistants connection between the teams, but it’s there. Trust me.) with a little more running back involvement (passes out of the backfield and such). Saturday night the Cougars put up 664 yards of offense and let their quarterback throw the ball 76 times. Most teams don’t even run 76 plays in the course of a game (Houston ran 103 in this game). Unfortunately for Houston, their defense, particularly their run defense, is non-existent. UTEP was able to grind out 305 yards on the ground at a staggering 7.4 yards per carry. Perhaps “grind out” is selling their effort short. How about run freely until they reached the endzone multiple times?

Houston’s dreams of making a run at a BCS game have come to an end, but they should take solace in the fact that they’d be tied for first if they played in the Big 12 South.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Shay Hodge, WR, Ole Miss
Hodge came out of the witness protection program and dominated the Vanderbilt pass defense for eight catches for 122 yards and two touchdowns. Outside of A.J. Green, I don’t think there’s another receiver in the SEC I’d like to have at this point. Hodge runs great routes, catches anything thrown to him and is extremely strong in going for the ball. If only his quarterback could put a complete game together, Hodge could have a game where he makes a run at 200 yards.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Mike Hartline, QB, Kentucky
17 of 31 for 168 yards, 1 TD and 3 INTs. Ugh. Hartline is consistently producing games which seem to give every reason in the world he should not be playing quarterback. Apparently, Kentucky has no desire to give Randall Cobb another shot at quarterback so it’s Mike Hartline or bust. I look forward to seeing his work down the stretch.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Bobby Petrino, Arkansas
After seeing his team get thumped at Alabama, Petrino rallied the troops and obliterated a Mike Sherman-coached team, which is both easier said and done.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

Alabama at Ole Miss
The first real test for the Alabama offense (no, not Virginia Tech, they stink) and the best defense Ole Miss will see all year.

Florida at LSU
Get ready for Tebow watch all week. Will he or won’t he. Even without him I think Florida still has to feel pretty good going into this one.

Auburn at Arkansas
Upset alert. If Arkansas fans can stop clapping for Gus Malzahn’s success as Auburn’s offensive coordinator since in some messed up way his success helps further stoke the fire that Houston Nutt really was evil, they might see their team put the first loss on Auburn.

SEC Picks of Week 5

2009-10-01T23:24:00.003-04:00

Made while realizing the NHL season and the NHL itself were not cancelled this year. Must have been a nasty rumor. I’d like to watch, but I only get 225 channels and the Versus Outdoor Life Northeast Living Network isn’t one of them.

Last week: 7-1
Season: 31-4 (.886)

Alabama at Kentucky
In this space, I have expressed my respect and admiration for the job Rich Brooks has done at Kentucky. And of course, last week he repaid my touting of his abilities by dropping an epic stinkbomb in the first quarter against Florida. So earlier this week, I wrote that I took back all those nice things I said about him. Well, I’m back on the Rich Brooks bandwagon. Take a look at this Twitter post from yesterday:

Now that is one tough old man. And I’m quite certain he swore repeatedly at all the doctors. Anyway, glad he’s apparently okay because the only reason I even watch parts of Kentucky games is to see if I can catch Brooks unleashing a cluster bomb-like barrage of profanity on a player who’s just done something incredibly stupid. If I didn’t have that, I might never see Kentucky play.

As for this game, I fully expect Brooks’ saltiness to flex its muscle. Kentucky’s offense, in short, stinks. And their defense isn’t much better. Actually, I’m not even sure it is better. Watching Florida’s offense roll through their alleged defense and seeing their offense bumble around like an aluminum can-seeking hobo, I’m a little worried about my lofty prediction that had them fifth in the SEC East. They’re in serious need of getting their asses into first gear.

Unfortunately, that’s going to be hard to do with Alabama coming into Lexington. Improving your offense usually works when you’re playing teams like Miami (OH) or Arkansas, not Alabama. As Alabama proved last weekend, they make offenses much worse. And after shutting down Ryan Mallett, do you think Nick Saban is sweating Mike Hartline (whoever that is)?

Offensively, I’ll be looking to see if Alabama can get some sort of consistent ground game going. Outside of Trent Richardson’s 52-yard touchdown run last week, they piled up just 82 yards on 40 carries, which, if you do the math, is not good, especially against Arkansas’ defense. If they struggle running against Kentucky (the worst statistical run defense in the SEC), I’d be a little concerned if I cared about Alabama. Not for this game, but in future games against more talented teams. They’ve got plenty on offense to get by Kentucky and will do so with ease, but I wouldn’t feel great if it were up to Greg McElroy to win a game for me.

LSU at Georgia
This was the game I kept pointing to as when we would really find out more about LSU. But thanks to Mississippi State, I think we found out what this LSU team is: a very average team. They’re very erratic on offense, with a poor ability to run the ball, and defensively soft against the run and offense in general. They’re also the number four-ranked team in the country, which is hard to believe given their offensive struggles and their inability to shut down an offense led by an extra from Smurfs on Ice (granted, he would be the toughest Smurf given some of the hits he took, but still a Smurf). But I suppose other teams displaying their mediocrity (ahem, Ole Miss), LSU deserves to move up due to a process of elimination. Hell, if Virginia Tech and Ohio State are back in the top ten, then there’s no reason LSU shouldn’t be.

Looking at these two teams, it’s almost as if they’re identical. Both have offenses that rank in the bottom third of the SEC (Georgia’s is only better thanks to Arkansas’ defense), quarterbacks who have struggled mightily at times (although Jefferson is more talented), terrible running games (LSU is 10th and Georgia is 11th) and defenses that rank 9th (LSU) and 11th (Georgia) in the league in total defense. Statistically, it makes no sense that these teams even have winning records. And more amazingly for Georgia is that they’re -9 in turnover ratio (worst in the conference). LSU is +7, which is best and explains some of their good fortune.

So what happens when two below average to average teams play one another? I have no idea. Nothing would surprise me in this game. LSU by 30? I can see it. Georgia turns it over seven times and still wins? No big deal. The sky is the limit with this game. Hopefully, this collision of mediocrity won’t produce an Auburn/Tennessee game from last year when neither team could do anything remotely competent on offense. If two teams like this are going to play, at least give the rest of us some offensive excitement. Something like 38-34 would be just right.

I went back and forth on this one, but in the end settled on LSU. I think Georgia is just too sloppy (turnovers and penalties, which they are 11th and 12th, respectively) and in an even game, I’ll take the more disciplined team (hard to believe that would be a Les Miles team) and the quarterback with the most ability. As risky as it is to take Jordan Jefferson on the road, I still say Joe Cox airing it out 30 times or more is more dangerous.

Ole Miss at Vanderbilt
Saturday we find out if Ole Miss’ problems on the offensive line and at quarterback are correctable problems or are season-killing ones that can’t be fixed. So it’s sort of a big day. If a Vanderbilt defensive lineman, who, as of right now I don’t even know exists, plays to the level where his name is burned in my brain forever, then this Ole Miss team may not find its way to six or seven wins. However, if the three man rush jailbreaks are kept to a minimum and Jevan Snead shakes off his Romaro Miller-itis, then there’s still hope for a shot at Atlanta.

I’m not looking for a massive blowout (mainly because I know it can’t happen), but I want to see a superior team with superior talent dominate an inferior team (for those confused as to which is which, Ole Miss is allegedly the superior team). The Ole Miss team will have had eight days to shake off the crash back to reality and get ready to make a statement that they aren’t done. This is a game that they should control from start to finish. Vanderbilt will offer a competitive defense (but nothing like South Carolina), a road environment that could be described as neutral and absolutely nothing on offense. There’s no excuse not to be in total control throughout. And that should be the message to this team. Dominate. Prove to yourself and everyone else that there’s not a giant fork sticking out of the team’s collective back.

Ole Miss should win, but I get the feeling it will be yet another excruciatingly painful Ole Miss/Vandy game in which it takes the better part of three and a half quarters to finally put the game on ice, a feat which Ole Miss hasn’t done against Vandy the last two years.

South Carolina State at South Carolina
Baring a disaster, South Carolina should be 5-1 going into Alabama in three weeks, which is suddenly an intriguing game. Spurrier matching wits with Saban. Saban already destroyed one offensive guru in Bobby Petrino, and although Spurrier may no longer have that title, he still has to be considered somewhat dangerous.

Georgia Tech at Mississippi State
Last year, Mississippi State put up 400 yards of offense and matched Georgia Tech in time of possession. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, they also turned the ball over four times, gave up 500 yards on defense (438 on the ground) and scored only 7 points. So one would think there’s not a tremendous advantage for Georgia Tech, especially with the game being in Starkville. However, remember when State met Auburn’s run-option oriented attack? 390 yards on the ground at a staggering 6.6 yards per carry.

Now, that Auburn team is a little more balanced than this Georgia Tech team, but it’s still a team that comes in with an offense that leans heavily on the run and is option-based. I don’t like State’s chances defending an option team (and one that gashed them last year). But I suppose if they wanted a great lesson in shutting down the option, they could watch LSU’s defense on the fourth and goal play from last Saturday (too soon?). That’s how you defend the option.

I think this game will be closer than last year, but given State’s recent struggles against good running teams, the brutal emotional loss last week and that Tyson Lee is still playing quarterback, Georgia Tech should win.

Texas A&M vs. Arkansas
In a game played at the new Cowboys’ stadium (wait, the Cowboys have a new stadium? I must have missed out on this.), two old Southwest Conference rivals collide blah blah blah blah blah. We get it. The old days of cheating, hatred and Texas are momentarily revisited. Both groups of fans will marvel at all the lights and electricity running those lights inside the stadium. Both will recall the good old days of the SWC. And both will long for those days to come back, not realizing that their current conferences make them millions upon millions of dollars.

Once the game starts, I’m not sure what to expect. Texas A&M has thrashed the likes of New Mexico, Utah State (only by 8) and UAB so who knows what they actually bring to the table. Oh, and they’re coached by Mike Sherman, who, by all accounts, stinks. But allegedly A&M has installed a new, fast-paced offense, which, when played against better competition, should get them into punting situations faster. I’m taking Arkansas here because they’ve played a pair of real games and I can’t ever cast my lot with Mike Sherman.

Auburn at Tennessee
Last year, Auburn played a huge role in two of the most boring football games of the 21st century. The epic 3-2 win over Mississippi State and the burn-out-your-retinas game against Tennessee, which they won 14-12. Perhaps this year these crimes against humanity can be avoided. Auburn appears to have found an offense that works and even though it is tearing up lesser competition, it’s still tearing them apart as it should. That would lead you to believe we won’t witness another bloodbath of offensive inefficiency, but as I just mentioned, Auburn hasn’t played a good defensive team.

Lots of people, including myself, expected Florida to score at least 250 points against Tennessee earlier this year. Instead, the crafty, defensive veteran coach Monte Kiffin came up with a defensive plan that not only slowed Florida down, but actually gave Tennessee a chance to win (if they had a competent quarterback). I expect him to do the same again this week. Kiffin knows that despite Auburn quarterback Chris Todd’s good early season numbers, he still stinks. Look for him to load up against the run and play a lot of zero coverage or cover 1, daring Auburn to throw the ball.

Now, as genius of a plan that Kiffin might create, he still has no control over the offensive side of the ball. That falls under his son’s responsibility and, as much as I enjoy making fun of his son, he’s limited in what he can do on offense because of his quarterback. The good news for Tennessee is that Auburn’s defense isn’t very good. Ball State put 30 up on them, and West Virginia, despite six turnovers, ran up 30 points and 500 yards of offense. If they had limited themselves to maybe two turnovers, we might have seen 50 points and 700 yards of offense.

But do you see what’s going on here? These assholes are setting us up for another offensive travesty. An overrated offense going against a good defense that’s well coached. An absolutely horrible offense facing a defense that isn’t very good, but with enough good athletes to hold the bad offense in the same place. Damn these teams to hell. They’re going to do it again. I hate both of them. I’ll take Auburn on account that Jonathan Crompton still plays quarterback at Tennessee.

A Simpsons’ moment best describes what it will be like to watch this game:

From the Weekend That Was

2009-09-28T18:50:00.001-04:00

While watching SportsCenter Saturday night, I heard Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit say something that was actually useful as they recapped the day in college football. Musburger pointed out that it appears the top three teams in college football, Florida, Texas and Alabama, appear to be legitimate teams, while everyone else is sort of up in the air. Herbstreit went on to mention that now that these September games are over, we know the flaws of everyone after the top three (the top three teams have some perceived flaws, but they haven’t been exposed as such). And now that we know these flaws, we won’t be so surprised when, say another SEC team’s right defensive end records five sacks against Ole Miss.

GAME RECAPS

South Carolina 16, Ole Miss 10
Given that the Rebels had a matador playing left tackle, a quarterback who was more skittish than Romaro Miller in 2000 against Auburn and an offensive game plan that made David Cutcliffe seem innovative, it was pretty amazing they still had a chance to win the game. All of that credit of course goes to the Ole Miss defense, which was as good as advertised. They were certainly helped out by South Carolina’s sloppiness and penalties, especially inside the 10, but for the most part they did their job.

The same cannot be said for the Ole Miss offense. First, the game plan. The only explanation for this conservative atrocity I could come up with was that the coaches must have known how bad our offensive line was at pass blocking, and thus kept it simple. Even then it still doesn’t explain why the best player in the whole damn stadium, Dexter McCluster, touched the ball once in the first half. ONCE. Why they waited until we were elbow deep in shit to start giving him the ball made no sense at all. I understand his body can’t handle 25 touches a game for a season, but perhaps he should get more than one touch a half. Just a thought.

Second, Jevan Snead. It’s pretty obvious he has no faith in his offensive line and is rarely comfortable when he drops back to pass. He failed to step up into the pocket several times, which led to a sack or getting hit as he was throwing, and often danced around and threw on the run when it wasn’t necessary. Of course, it’s hard to throw into coverages of seven and eight, which South Carolina was able to have since they were getting pressure with only three and four (and sometimes JUST TWO) rushers. Had they blitzed more they might have set a sack record. Snead went through this problem early last year and one would think he would be over it by now, but clearly he is not. He has to settle himself down and remember how to operate in a pocket.

And third, the offensive line. Remember when I said I thought Ole Miss’ offensive line would be a little more stable than Alabama’s? I’m not sure if I’ve ever been more wrong in my life. We’re getting nothing with Bradley Sowell at left tackle and John Jerry, one of the returning starters, decided to take the night off. The other three spots played okay for the most part, but as a whole this group is just bad right now. And to be honest, I didn’t see anything that gave me hope they might turn it around over the next few games. Also, I’ll get more into Sowell and his now infamous quote later.

As for South Carolina, Stephen Garcia showed flashes of competence and is firmly entrenched himself in the slightly above average category. I thought he played pretty well considering the beating he was taking. He didn’t make any killer mistakes and made the simple throws that were required of him. I would have like to seen him operate a drive in which a score was absolutely needed, but thanks to the Ole Miss offense, I didn’t get that chance. Also, I keep hammering the Ole Miss offense, but part of their lack of success was the South Carolina defense. They played really well, especially up front, which after the Georgia debacle, I never would have believed.

And finally (seriously, this is it), I’ve never seen more media outrage over Ole Miss being ranked number four (or five depending on the poll) after losing a road SEC game on a Thursday night to a team that won seven games last year, including four SEC games. Now, I’m not saying Ole Miss didn’t deserve some criticism because they did, but such a vicious attack on Ole Miss and virtually no credit to South Carolina was ridiculous. And last time I checked, no one that plays, coaches or works for Ole Miss voted or hyped Ole Miss up to be the number four team in the country. That was done by the same assholes who couldn’t believe Ole Miss was number four.

I’m also still waiting for the same attacks on Penn State, California and USC. Penn State lost AT HOME in front of 100,000 people by 11 to another shitty Big Ten team. All I’ve heard here is how great Iowa is. Guess what? Iowa sucks, just like the rest of the Big Ten. California at least went on the road to get annihilated, yet no cries of how overrated they are when they do this same crap EVERY YEAR. And let’s not forget USC, then ranked number three, lost on the road to a Washington team that last won a game in 2007. 2007. Their biggest win was over another overrated Big Ten team that has been consistently destroyed when playing outside the conference. Please, let me know when the crucifixions of these teams take place.

LSU 30, Mississippi State 26
Speaking of overrated, welcome to the club LSU. A team that can’t run, can’t stop the run and whose quarterback is at best average. Even a Chris Todd-led Auburn offense racked up 500 yards on this Mississippi State defense. But if I cared at all about LSU, my biggest concern would be this is now two years running of below average defense. Yes, the goal line stand was involved a huge play by a great athlete, but the fact Mississippi State even got into that position is embarrassing. A five-foot nothing quarterback led three scoring drives of 66 yards or more, and was able to get down to the four-inch line in the final minutes. That can be best described as not good.

If you’re Mississippi State, you had a chance to beat the number seven team in the country despite turning the ball over four times and allowing an absurd 93-yard punt return for a touchdown (these stats are also a great indicator as to how bad LSU’s offense was). Yes, it was a sucky way to lose a game, but it was a sign of great progress for a team that was totally outmatched at Auburn just two weeks ago. We’ll find out more about this team and Dan Mullen if he can get them to carry over this success in the next two weeks against Georgia Tech and Houston, which now look like winnable games. But, damn, four inches. That’s going to be hard to get over.

Alabama 35, Arkansas 7
As Ryan Mallett found out, it’s much easier to throw against crappy defenses than good ones. Alabama made life miserable for Mallett and the Arkansas offense, exposing their offensive line as below average (which they might do to many offensive lines this year). The only thing that really surprised me about this game was Alabama’s inability to generate much offense outside of big plays against a bad Arkansas defense. Of their five scoring drives, only one was over five minutes and the scoring play was not over 50 yards (one of the drives was a short field drive of 35 yards). Obviously, they took a shot at some big plays and they hit, but I doubt the result would be the same against a more legitimate defense. And the Trent Richardson 50-yard touchdown run was a classic example of how to miss tackles, although credit him for running hard and through one or two of them. I’m still not sold on the Alabama offense, but when they play defense like they do, tons of points and yards aren’t needed.

Florida 41, Kentucky 7
I take back all those nice things I had to say about Rich Brooks. A more unorganized, unprepared team has not taken the field in Lexington since Ed Orgeron took the Ole Miss Rebels there in 2006. The first quarter of Saturday’s game was just awful across the board. The offense was confused, the defense was confused and Rich Brooks was mainly just pissed off. After that though, the Wildcats did settle down, not surrendering 80 points and not getting shutout.

The big story here of course is the Tim Tebow injury. No doubt 40-year old media types wept when they heard their guy was injured and taken to a hospital. And I think most Florida fans stopped breathing until sometime Sunday afternoon. However, what really irritated me about this whole thing was after the play was over and ESPN’s moronic Bob Davie tried to breakdown what happened, he made up what he thought happened and stuck to his guns when it was obvious he was wrong. Watch this:

Davie claimed Kentucky rushed six players when in fact they rushed five. He said the reason for the hit was that Florida had one less blocker in than Kentucky had rushers, which was wrong (five blockers, five rushers). Florida’s left tackle (not sure if he’s related to Bradley Sowell) either screwed up his blocking assignment or Tebow just misread who was actually rushing. From watching the video over and over, I lean in the direction of the offensive lineman since the guy who hit Tebow was in a rush stance. Either way, Bob Davie continued to add evidence to the case that he’s a moron.

Georgia 20, Arizona State 17
And Joe Cox comes crashing back to mediocrity. I think I’m going to create some chart that lists all the mediocre quarterbacks who suddenly turn into Greg Zolloman when he used to play against Ole Miss whenever they play Arkansas. We’ll call it the Joe Cox Effect.

Tennessee 34, Ohio 23
I was off by two passes. Crompton hit 17 instead of 15. Give yourselves $20 for my mistake.

Auburn 54, Ball State 30
I’ll now give myself $20 for correctly predicted Kodi Burns would complete less than five passes. In fact, he attempted no passes.

Vanderbilt 36, Rice 17
No one wants to read a recap of this game.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Virginia Tech 31, Miami 7
So the U is not back. Sorry, Luther. As I thought they would, Virginia Tech didn’t let Jacory Harris sit back and throw and as a result, they dominated the Hurricanes. Let’s hope all the future Miami opponents took note of this strategy.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Anthony Dixon, RB, Mississippi State
Dixon pounded away at LSU and scratched out 106 yards and two touchdowns on 27 carries. He ran hard, looked lean and even showed flashes of some speed, which I never knew he had. Unfortunately for him and his team, he was not given the ball when it was four inches away from the end zone.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Bradley Sowell, LT, Ole Miss
"I'm glad it's over with so everybody can stop talking about it and we can just play ball.”

I had nothing against him after the game other than just being angry that he was the best we could trot out at left tackle. It’s not necessarily his fault he’s playing when he sucks. But then he opened his mouth and said this. I hope someone on the defense went over and punched him in the balls for stealing the victory they earned. Instead of embracing the high ranking and wanting to prove everyone else wrong, he acted like it was some giant burden or cross he had to carry, much like a teenage girl who doesn’t like the situation in which she finds herself. Seriously, that’s what he thought. With another performance like the one in Columbia, the name of this weekly award might be changed to his name.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Urban Meyer, Florida
Destroying a relatively hostile environment in 15 minutes was quite impressive. I assumed it would take the better part of two and a half quarters, but in just 15 minutes he was up 31-0 over Kentucky.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

LSU at Georgia
A battle of mediocre teams, one of which is disguised as the fourth ranked team in America. Despite the reeking of mediocrity, I think this should be a good game.

Ole Miss at Vanderbilt
Surely the Ole Miss offensive line isn’t as bad as I think it is. If the Vandy defensive line is terrorizing the Ole Miss backfield, this is going to be an incredibly long year.

SEC Picks of Week 4

2009-09-24T17:01:00.000-04:00

Made while staring at a clock that just won’t get to 6:30 fast enough…

Last week: 8-1
Season: 24-3 (.889)

Ole Miss at South Carolina
For months now, this is the game I’ve been pointing to as the make or break game for Ole Miss’ season. Win and the Rebels probably win 10 games. Lose and that total will be closer to seven or eight. And for months I’ve been simply terrified of this game. On the road, first real game of the season and the Thursday night home underdog’s amazing ability to pull off wins (I have no evidence to back this up other than I vaguely remember reading that the home underdog has an outright winning record. I guess you’ll have to trust me.).

Well, we’ve finally arrived at the day of reckoning and I’m strangely calm after being miserably worried Sunday through Tuesday. Sometime Tuesday morning I had some sort of an epiphany and feel no worry as the game nears. Now, I will certainly be filled with that nervous nauseous feeling once the game starts, but that cannot be helped. Yes, I do understand that it’s completely insane to get so worked up over the actions of 18-22 year olds, but screw you for judging me.

Anyway, here’s why I like Ole Miss to win and, as of now, feel no worry:

-Ole Miss has better players. Seriously, look up and down both rosters. Ole Miss will hold an edge at a majority of the positions. South Carolina doesn’t have what Ole Miss has on offense and hasn’t shown much on defense.

-The Ole Miss defense is not the same defense South Carolina destroyed last year. Yes, many of the same players are there, but that defense that lost became something much greater as the season went on. The Gamecocks haven’t played the current defense and I don’t think they can handle them.

-The Ole Miss offense, which has been much more chunky than smooth, has run absolutely nothing filled with any sort of creativity or strategy. It’s been all basic plays that rely on nothing but superior skill. Pure skill doesn’t work when conference play starts and that’s why you’ll see a much more diverse and creative offense tonight.

The bottom line is that if Ole Miss doesn’t turn the ball over, they’ll win. In fact, that will be the story for pretty much the rest of the year. The only team that can beat Ole Miss straight up is Alabama. Everyone else will need help and even if South Carolina gets a little help, they can’t win.

LSU at Mississippi State
In the days of old, as in just two years ago, this skull dragging would be over with by the second quarter. However, LSU doesn’t have the offensive firepower they once had and their defense isn’t the F5 tornado it once was. I’m very interested to see how the LSU defense plays in this one. It’s a game they should dominate, much like Auburn dominated State, but if they don’t, some serious questions need to be asked about this defense. State doesn’t have enough of anything to win this game, so I don’t think the outcome will ever be in doubt, but I think this is a great opportunity to find out if LSU really is an elite team in the SEC.

Arkansas at Alabama
I said earlier this week that I’m fascinated by the coaching match up in this game. Nick Saban’s defense going up against Bobby Petrino’s offense. Saban has had basically two weeks to get ready for this game (since North Texas preparation was most likely kept to a minimum) and I like his chances with that much time to get ready. Plus, if he just looked at the Georgia film and did the exact opposite of whatever they did, he’d already be doing much better.

Arkansas has no defense and everyone knows it. Look for Alabama to pound away via the ground game and keep the Arkansas offense off the field. With Alabama’s ability to run and then mix in the play action they love so much, I think they’ll put plenty of points on the board. Arkansas can’t stop them and they’ll have to play a perfect game on offense to have a chance, but they won’t. Alabama wins.

Florida at Kentucky
A perfect chance to add validity to my belief that Rich Brooks is a good coach. Tennessee showed everyone how to play this Florida team and I expect Brooks to follow suit. He’s got a little more offensive talent so he can be a little more aggressive than the Vols, but it’s not enough to win. I just want to see Kentucky keep it within a few scores and make it a mildly competitive game.

Arizona State at Georgia
Can Joe Cox live the good life for another week? It probably doesn’t matter. As long as Georgia avoids massive quantities of turnovers, they win. And remember when there was a contingent of Ole Miss fans (a contingent made up Pete Boone and Robert Khayat) who thought Dennis Erickson should become Ole Miss’ next head coach? What an outstanding idea. Granted, he certainly would have been better than Ed Orgeron initially, but so would have an eight-year old.

Ball State at Auburn
I’ve got $20 that says Kodi Burns can’t complete more than five passes.

Ohio at Tennessee
I’ve got another $20 that says Jonathan Crompton can’t complete 15.

Vanderbilt at Rice
One of a handful of times Vandy will play a team that’s actually worse than they are. So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice. Vandy wins.

Belly of the Beast Call-In Show

2009-09-23T17:01:00.002-04:00

Week two of the “call-in” show, albeit a little late, but there. This means it’s lasted one week longer than I thought it would. On to our first caller…

Bodhi from Venice Beach, CA: What’s up with SC when they go to the Pacific Northwest? Is it the rainy climate? Clouds? The seemingly never-ending sea of white people? If they want the ultimate thrill, they’ve gotta be willing to pay the ultimate price.

Gray: I knew you survived that giant wave in Australia. But as for your question, the Trojans appear to be allergic to whatever’s in the air in the Pacific Northwest. They’ve now lost in that area of the country in 2009, 2008 (Oregon State), 2007 (Oregon) and 2006 (Oregon State), all of which were loses to inferior teams. They seem to have no problem plundering and pillaging the rest of the Pac-10, but fall to pieces when they go were the sun is behind the clouds 300 days of the year. I’m not sure why that happens, but I do have some ideas to fix this problem for next year.

1) Did you see the ESPN segment last week about all the USC players singing “Lean on Me” during a team meeting? Yes? Well scratch that feel good crap. Start singing something with inner angst and rage. I recommend something out of the Nirvana catalog. Perhaps something like “In Bloom” would set the mood right.

2) Since every day in Southern California is like 80 degrees and sunny, practice at night in the desert and have some of those “cool zone” machines used for hot weather spray a constant, cold mist over the field. This will give a more accurate feel for the weather one will experience there.

3) Throw cultural diversity out the window. Invite every white person in Los Angeles to practice. This will help simulate the thousands of all-white faces that will be staring at the team when they play up there next year.

Do that and your fortunes should improve. Next caller…

Dale from Omaha: How painful was Nebraska’s last minute collapse against Virginia Tech on Saturday?

Gray: Well, as an Ole Miss fan, I’ve been through more awful loses than I can remember. Eventually the pain dulls and everything runs together so you sort of lose track of all the misery. But as for your loss on Saturday, it was particularly brutal. You were in control for virtually most of the game and limited Virginia Tech’s hapless offense no almost nothing through the air. You also continued to show the country that despite what talking heads constantly say, Tyrod Taylor is an absolutely horrible quarterback.

And then you blew up. I didn’t really care who won the game, but as I watched Taylor scramble around on third down and not pursued by defensive linemen, I was reminded of Matt Jones’ performance in the seven overtime game (yes, SEVEN OVERTIMES) against Ole Miss. And like you, we lost. Bill Simmons has spent many words coming up with a levels of losing scale and I think this one might create its own level. And to make it even worse, if you had won, the country wouldn’t have to watch an average Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl this year. Thanks for nothing, jackasses.

Next caller…

Luther from Coral Gables, FL: Is the U back?

Gray: Is this Luther Campbell from 2 Live Crew fame? I feel honored to be talking with someone who was once a blight on the Miami program for the admitted cash payments and favors for players, yet continues to be a visible presence in the program. Surely you’ve reformed by now and participate in no such activities because that’s the only explanation as to why you’d still be allowed around there right?

Luther: Answer the mother *$%&#@$ question, whitey.

Gray: Indeed I will, good sir. It’s hard to say. On one hand, they’ve handled the mediocre ACC teams that have come their way with an outstanding pass offense, which I never thought I’d be able to say about a Miami team again, and a defense that is suspect against the pass, but has performed well against the run. On the other hand, they’re one accurate Christian Ponder pass away from being 1-1 and unranked and as mentioned, not very good against the pass.

I’m interested in seeing Jacory Harris have to make some throws where he doesn’t have eight seconds to look over the defense before throwing. Credit his offensive line and the play calling for some of that, but I think some of that was the result of playing some bad defenses. Hopefully, Virginia Tech’s defense will show up and we’ll have a more definitive answer this weekend. If not, we’ll have to wait another week when Oklahoma comes to Miami. And if Miami continues this onslaught of offense against these two teams, I’ll admit the U is on their way back. Defensively, I think they’re too shaky right now to have them be all the way back.

One more caller…

Josh from Nashville, TN: If a Big 10 game were held in your backyard, would you watch?

Gray: My first answer would be no, absolutely not. I really have no desire to watch players with the speed of refrigerators, washers and dryers run around in such a big area. However, I am reminded of a Simpsons episode where they give away their old washer and dryer to Moe’s Tavern, and the drunks there race the two against each other. They looked like they were having fun yelling for the washer to win. So perhaps I might.

Until next week.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-09-21T17:43:00.002-04:00

Even though I was faced with a battle against a combination of whooping cough, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, post nasal drip and perhaps a touch of the black lung, I managed to plow through something like 11 hours of college football on Saturday just so I could have something to write about here today. Well, that’s not actually true. I did it because I’m sort of an addict and like all addicts, despite my condition and environment, I had to have the good stuff.

Anyway, I’m trying on a new pair of pants around here (and yes, they were from the Pants Store) so there’s a little more content below all the game recaps. So feel free to stick around and read that after you are reminded of all the ways your team did or did not disappoint you over the weekend.

GAME RECAPS

Kentucky 31, Louisville 27
If you live outside the state of Kentucky (with the exception of fans of these schools), there is literally zero appeal to this game. Kentucky football isn’t bringing anything glamorous to the table and the days of Louisville lighting up scoreboards and piling up yards are gone. So what we had left was two teams with bad defenses giving up points to mediocre offenses. Luckily, this game came on during the time when most people were getting ramped up for the Florida/Tennessee game and no one was really paying attention.

The only thing worth noting here was that Kentucky offensive coordinator Randy Sanders broke his arm when one of his players crashed into him as a play spilled into the sidelines. Tennessee fans would want you to believe he broke it while aggressively putting his hands around his throat while calling plays, but that would be incorrect.

Alabama 53, North Texas 7
Just never listen to me when it comes to point spreads. I know nothing.

Florida 23, Tennessee 13
It wasn’t the raging bloodbath that many were hoping for, and actually was a pretty boring game, but what America did get out of this was a blueprint on how to beat Florida. A patient, time-consuming ground game, mixed in with some play action and screens, and a defense that takes away deep plays, calls some great blitzes and puts the burden on the Florida rushing game to win. You really can’t put into words how well Tennessee’s defense played considering they weren’t getting much help from their offense. Of course, Tennessee played about as well as they could have played on defense (and arguably on offense given what they have at quarterback) and still lost. However, a team with a competent quarterback and offense in general can beat Florida, provided they get a defensive effort and game plan like the ones Tennessee put up.

If you’re Tennessee, obviously you have to be pleased with how well your defense played. On the other side, your offense did better than expected, but you have to be frustrated with the quarterback play. As mentioned above, average quarterback play gives them a real chance in this game. Of course, they had no one on the sidelines that could give them that so they really had no chance. I was especially confused by the complete lack of urgency when the Vols got the ball back with six minutes to go, down two scores. I understand that was the plan that got them there, but with six minutes left and down ten you have to be aggressive. If not, you’re absolutely going to lose, which they did. Perhaps some no-huddle, maybe a trick play or a shot down the field against single coverage should have been in order. Instead, they bled the clock down and it eventually ended with Crompton throwing a pick with two minutes left. Their strategy was great up until that drive.

As for Florida, I’d be a little worried on offense. They didn’t get much by way of their receivers and Tebow really felt some pressure from the Tennessee defense (three sacks), but at the same time they did hit up an SEC defense for 200 yards on the ground, which makes winning much easier. Defensively, they were a little shaky against a one-dimensional offense, but basically shut down the Tennessee run game at the right times and forced Crompton to throw. But by no means is this a terrifying defense. Florida is still a really good team and will be extremely hard to beat, but Tennessee showed it may not be as difficult as previously thought.

One final note, I thoroughly enjoyed the opening shot of Ed Orgeron trying to get the team fired up in the tunnel before they took the field. It brought back some memories of lambs being led to the slaughter.

LSU 31, Directional School 3
Interesting note that I heard on ESPN is that in the history of the games between these schools, Louisiana-Lafayette has never scored a touchdown.

Mississippi State 15, Vanderbilt 3
Only Dan Mullen’s bounce back kept me from a perfect week in the picks. I watched for maybe 10 or fifteen minutes and all I saw was a trainwreck of offensive incompetence, led by Vandy’s revamped offense. Give credit to State’s defense for not giving up any big plays and keeping a crappy offense in neutral. They did what any decent defense should do to a bad offense. And in all seriousness, if State got to four wins, I’d be very impressed.

South Carolina 38, Oceanic Directional School 16
In addition to the list of diseases above that I’m currently battling, I’m now dealing with nausea and probably an ulcer all because of Ole Miss’ Thursday night game against South Carolina. Remember all those diseases that people in your wagon party used to get in Oregon Trail? I’ll probably have all of those by then. I’m going to be an absolute wreck by the time Thursday gets here.

Ole Miss 52, Directional I-AA School 6
Typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery, measles, scabies, rabies, raging fever, lice. I’m pretty sure I’m already showing symptoms of at least three of those.

Georgia 52, Arkansas 41
Easily the most entertaining game of the weekend. Lots of offense and a pair of defenses that did their best to get out of the way of those carrying the ball. We knew Arkansas’ defense was bad, and they certainly upheld their reputation, and now we know that Georgia’s defense is officially horrible as well. They’ve given up 912 yards and 78 points in two conference games. Arkansas is on pace to break that level of terribleness, but right now Georgia is our leader in bad defense.

And thanks to that shoddy Arkansas defense, Joe Cox showed real quarterbacking skill, so much skill that I’m sure he often said to himself, “Wow, how did I do that?” If Georgia can keep up the receiving combination of A.J. Green and Michael Moore, there’s hope for their offense yet. We’ll find out more when they play LSU in two weeks.

As for Arkansas, if Ryan Mallett has time, he will destroy opposing defenses. Georgia was eventually able to cut down his time to throw and that was the end of the Arkansas offense. He was much better than I expected, some of that was due to Georgia’s defense, but I thought he played well considering there wasn’t much happening by way of the run. If Arkansas’ defense can show up to any games, this won’t be a fun team to play, despite the potential one-dimensional nature of this offense.

Auburn 41, West Virginia 30
Hey, guess who else’s defense stinks? The Tigers got rolled up for 500 yards and did so while generating six turnovers. I think West Virginia might have had an outside shot at 750 yards of offense had they not turned it over so much. The good news for Auburn is that their offense is not the spectacular disaster it was last year so their defense doesn’t have to be that good. Although if the defense continues this level of suckiness, they’ll need the USC offense circa 2005 to hold on to some wins. We’ll find out if this Auburn offense is for real when the go to Tennessee in two weeks. And I suppose if Jonathan Crompton lights them up for some significant yardage in that game, we’ll know that their defense is one of the worst in the country.

GAME I DIDN’T PICK BUT IT DESERVES MENTION HERE

Florida State 54, BYU 28
I mentioned during last week’s “call-in show” that I thought BYU had a strong to quite strong chance to beat FSU. What an idiot I am. I completely forgot about the Mississippi State team in 2000 that traveled to BYU and simply pummeled the Cougars without mercy, 44-28. They were 20 times faster and it often seemed like it was 15 on 11 because of their team speed and BYU’s lack thereof. In that 2000 game, State ran for 200 yards (FSU ran for 300+), created four turnovers (FSU created 5) and simply blew them away with speed. Now why I didn’t see FSU doing the same thing is beyond stupid. The lesson, per the usual, is that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Also, maybe Oklahoma really is bad.

DEUCE MCALLISTER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who dominated with or without the help of his teammates and coaches.)

Joe Cox, QB, Georgia
Abandoned and left for dead on the side of the road by most Georgia fans, Cox picked himself up, found his way to Fayetteville and turned in a great game against Arkansas. Granted, he was facing Arkansas’ non-existent defense, but 18 of 26 for 375 yards and five touchdowns is still pretty impressive. Sure he’ll probably come crashing back to earth, but at least for this week Joe Cox looked like he belonged in the SEC.

ERIC OLIVER OF THE WEEK
(Given to the player who caused his team’s fans the highest degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth due to blown assignments and generally piss poor play.)

Jonathan Crompton, QB, Tennessee
A fairly obvious pick and perhaps the one player who might win this award multiple times, but Crompton’s performance in Gainesville was 1,000% awful. 11 of 19 for 93 yards and two interceptions and he did that while playing in an offense that would have been declared conservative in 1949. Had Tennessee’s defense collapsed and forced the Vols to throw much more than they did, he could have made a run at six interceptions. Our loss more than anything.

JOHN VAUGHT OF THE WEEK
(Given to the coach who dominated whatever task was in front of him.)

Monte Kiffin, Defensive Coordinator, Tennessee
The most powerful offense in the SEC and its spread formations, Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and the smartest man in the entire world running the show was stacked up against Kiffin’s defense and for the most part, he held them in check. Yes, his defense did give up large chunks of rushing yards, but if not for their outstanding pass defense and pressure, Florida might have covered that 29-point spread.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEK

Ole Miss at South Carolina
Gout!

Arkansas at Alabama
Let’s see this Arkansas offense against a real defense. I’m really looking forward to see what Saban has in store to slow the Hogs down and what Petrino will do to challenge Saban’s defense. Very interesting coaching matchup.

SEC Picks of Week 3

2009-09-18T11:02:00.003-04:00

Made while having an airing of grievances with my fantasy football team…

Last week: 5-1
Season: 16-2 (.889)

Louisville at Kentucky
I’ll just go ahead and get it out of the way and tell you that I know nothing about this game. I’m pretty sure Louisville still stinks, although not as badly as they did, and Kentucky is Kentucky, although a more improved version of Kentucky. It’s hard to know much when the two teams have defeated Indiana State and Miami (OH). What I can tell you based in facts is that there was a time Rich Brooks could not beat Louisville, but in the last two years he has. This is a weird game. We should move on. Brooks and the Wildcats make it three straight over the Cardinals.

Directional School at Alabama
The good news for North Texas is that they’ve already equaled their win total (one) from last season. The bad news is that they may not have one total yard of offense on Saturday. Just kidding. But I’m serious. However, the line of North Texas (+38) looks nice only because Alabama’s offense isn’t that great and, even though I claimed there would be no gambling information mentioned here, the Tide is just 10-22-2 against the spread in their last 34 home games. And yes, I am aware that last sentence made me sound like a gambling degenerate.

But I do have a few questions about this game. One, I don’t know how much money North Texas is getting for making the trip to Tuscaloosa (I’m assuming in the $1 million range), but what percentage of their athletic budget is made up of that money? 10%? 20%? 58%? Someone with research ability needs to find out. Two, how long could Nick Saban’s annual salary (roughly $4 million) fund the North Texas athletic department? 6 months? 6 years? And finally, I don’t really know where I was going with any of this. Just trying to make conversation.

Tennessee at Florida
The day of reckoning has arrived for Lane Kiffin, who spent a good chunk of the offseason yammering about singing Rocky Top in the Swamp after a Tennessee win, accusing Urban Meyer of a recruiting violation and removing all humility from his soul. In other words, he spent it poking a sleeping Kodiak bear who, in addition to razor sharp claws and teeth, is also armed with Tomahawk missiles, an arsenal of F5 tornados and a fire-breathing, giant dragon. And that’s just on offense.

Did no one tell Kiffin that his best returning quarterback was Jonathan Crompton? Surely he knew, right? I mean, you wouldn’t run around saying all the stuff he said if he knew unless HE IS COMPLETELY IN OVER HIS HEAD. I said the Lane Kiffin era was going to be a spectacular train wreck and so far it’s right on pace. Unfortunately, it really does look like it’s headed to an end midway through the 2010 season as predicted.

And this just in to Belly of the Beast. It’s a reenactment of a phone call placed earlier today by Florida coach Urban Meyer to Lane Kiffin. Meyer is played by Tom Cruise and Kiffin by an unknown and possibly uncredited Asian actor. And Matthew McConaughey represents the media and its unhealthy man-lust for Urban Meyer.

(LANGAUGE WARNING)

Well then, I’ll take Florida.

Former Directional School at LSU
The second Sun Belt team of the week placed on the sacrificial altar for the SEC. And it will be 0-2 for the week.

Mississippi State at Vanderbilt
In all seriousness, State might not win another game. Their remaining schedule is a nightmare, made even worse if you’re not very good, which State isn’t. If they lose this game, I can absolutely see them finishing 1-11. If they win, maybe 3-9, more likely 2-10. Hard to believe that the third game of the year for State is a must-win if they want to avoid a totally embarrassing season, but it is. Unfortunately, as long as Tyson Lee and/or Chris Relf are prominently involved in the offense, I don’t think they’ll be able to beat any SEC team. SEC defenses are always some of the better ones in the country (right now, eight teams rank in the top 50 in total defense) and if your offense or the players running that offense stink, you’re not going anywhere. However, the good news for State fans (as if they care what I think) is that I do foresee them beating Middle Tennessee State later this year.

Oceanic Directional School (I think it works) at South Carolina
Was Spurrier found face down in a drain pool last weekend? I hope someone picked him up.

Directional I-AA School at Ole Miss
What an exciting home opener. Here’s a list of all the SEC’s home openers:

Miami (OH) (Kentucky)
Jackson State (Mississippi State)
Western Kentucky (Tennessee)
Charleston Southern (Florida)
Louisiana Tech (Auburn)
Missouri State (Arkansas)
Western Carolina (Vanderbilt)
Florida International (Alabama)
Vanderbilt (LSU)
South Carolina (Georgia)
Florida Atlantic (South Carolina)

Compelling and rich.

Georgia at Arkansas
Everyone is all on board with an Arkansas win here and I’m not sure it’s going to be that simple. Yes, Georgia’s defense appears to suck. Yes, Georgia’s offense appears to suck. And yes, this is the third straight highly competitive game for Georgia. But, let’s look at Arkansas. If you recall, their defense was awful last year, and because they haven’t played anyone yet we don’t know what they’ve got there. Two, we don’t know what Ryan Mallett brings to the table when not playing in Big Ten games (his state line from Michigan: 61 of 141 (43.3%), 892 yds, 7 TD, 5 INT). And three, did I mention how bad Arkansas was on defense last year?

Now, Arkansas may come out in this game and blow Georgia away and answer all of my questions and doubts I have about them. But, until I see some proof, and Missouri State is not proof, I’m not fully buying into the hype surrounding an Arkansas transformation. I’m taking Georgia here and when Arkansas hangs 50 on them, please be sure to remind me of my stupidity on Monday.

West Virginia at Auburn
I just realized there’s a pretty good chance Auburn could start out the year 5-0, which would double Gene Chizik’s career win total coming into this season. In the next two weeks, they play Ball State and Tennessee, one of which is a certain win and the other could be called a probable win. I know nothing of West Virginia other than moonshine, crystal meth and no black people live in that state (except those on the UWV sports teams), but I am quite certain their football team is going to be thrashed on Saturday.

Belly of the Beast Call-In Show

2009-09-17T14:30:00.002-04:00

A new feature here that will most likely meet the same fate as the Classic Conversation, Looking for a Midweek Pulse and several other of my ideas that ultimately bit the dust because of general apathy and sloth, but I like this idea so I’ll give it a try. Ideally, this would appear each Wednesday (being that today is Thursday we’re already off to a good start) to give you something to digest as you eagerly (perhaps a loose interpretation of the word, no?) await Friday’s preview of the weekend SEC games.

Anyway, the idea here is that if the Belly of the Beast had a call-in show, this is what it would be like. And although I tend to focus mostly on what goes on around the SEC, I take calls covering all schools and conferences. That is, if I had a telephone set up, which I don’t, an ability to broadcast said phone calls (nope) and people actually called, which they wouldn’t. On to our first caller…

Norm from Broken Arrow, OK: Are the Sooners totally screwed?

Gray: Yes Norm, they are. The teams you’d normally steamroll, Miami, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma State, are suddenly not automatic wins. In fact, I’d be a little worried about Tulsa this weekend. Good offense, not great defense, but not awful. Sounds a little like BYU doesn’t it? And why did you get your hopes up for this season when you knew your offensive line was totally new? Had Bradford survived the BYU game, the line would have eventually bitten you square in the ass.

Next caller…

Gavin from Provo, UT: What are BYU’s chances this weekend?

Gray: I’d say strong to quite strong. Look, FSU’s pass defense is awful. Awful. In fact, their defense in general may not be very good. They love to keep blitzing and play very aggressive even when they don’t have the players to play that type of defense. Hence giving up 30-something points to Miami. Yes, Florida State will be faster and have more athletes than currently live in the entire state of Utah (20% of which play for the Jazz), but BYU showed they could play with that type of athleticism when they beat Oklahoma. Plus, the Cougars are fielding a team made up of 24 to 35 year olds, which will give them a physical and mental advantage.

Who’s next…

Brent from Columbus, OH: Why?!?!? The pain!!! It’s a deep burn!!! I’ve burned all of my Walmart jerseys and even my precious Starter jacket!!! Help!!!

Gray: I guess that’s an actual question so I’ll take a shot. First, get used to it, or stop playing teams that reside outside of the stretch of land from Minnesota to Pennsylvania. Second, start questioning your head coach. I mentioned it in brief fashion here, but Chris at smartfootball.com breaks it down in far greater (and better) details here. Jim Tressell specializes in being spectacularly outcoached. And finally, petition national media members to stop ranking you so high in preseason polls. That way, when you lose a game you should win or are demolished by a far superior team, the pain will be more of a dull ache.

Moving on…

Bobby Dan from Alabama: Hello? Hello?

Gray: Yes, go ahead.

Bobby Dan: Yeah, uh, you was talkin’ to the feller from Oklahoma about the offensive line and I had a question.

Gray: Okay, what is your question?

Bobby Dan: My question is, so, if Oklahoma’s line is new and that got that quarterback hurt, what does this mean for Alabama’s offensive line? Thanks, and I’ll just hang up and listen.

Gray: Okay, sure. Thanks, Bobby Dan. And let me be the first to congratulate you on being the first Alabama fan to ever question that something might be wrong with the Crimson Tide. I’ve never heard that before. As for your question, I’d be a little worried about three of the five spots being filled by guys who didn’t play last year. I’m not saying they’re going to make a colossal mistake and that lead to your quarterback being injured, but new offensive lines are not good things to have when conference play starts.

Next caller…

Ricky from Alabama: HORSESHIT!!!

Gray: Ah, Ricky. I can’t wait to see video of you after a game in which Alabama loses. I’ll probably watch it at least 25 times.

A couple more and we’ll mercifully wrap this up…

Larry from Muscle Shoals, AL: Yeah, couldn’t you say the same thing about Ole Miss’ offensive line?

Gray: Indeed you can, Larry. While not overly impressive in the Memphis game, they didn’t make any killer mistakes, but it’s also Memphis. What makes me a little less worried about Ole Miss’ line is that Daverin Geralds, the center, returns after a full season at the position in which he was outstanding down the stretch last year. He’s responsible for the offensive line and knows what he’s doing, plus has a little more experience around him than what Alabama has. Now, the two new linemen, the left tackle and right guard (I’d name names here but nobody would know who the hell I was talking about) could be completely overwhelmed against South Carolina and blow this theory to hell. We’ll talk next Friday after we see what happens.

Last one…

Lou from Bristol, CT: My friend Beano and I are having a kegger at the house on Saturday. All are welcome, but if you want liquor it’s on you. And don’t tell Mark May.

Gray: Lou, what happened to your lisp?

Lou: Ha! You think I really talk like sthissss? It’s all made up. The more absurd I sound, the more people watch our show and the closer I get back to coaching. I tell ya….wait….Beano, for the love of all things holy put your shirt back on. And cover up that gobbler you call a neck.

Gray: Alright, Lou, we’ve got to run. Until next time.

From the Weekend That Was

2009-09-14T12:58:00.001-04:00

With Ole Miss having an off week, I too took an off week of sorts and didn’t watch very much college football. I found it to be refreshing and non-emotionally damaging, which was nice. However, thanks to some outstanding scheduling by those in the Ole Miss athletic department, I’ll be locked in for the next 11 weeks and can promise much more insightful and stinging reviews of our football teams and all the ways they find to disappoint us. So without seeing much more than highlights for each game, here was the week in the SEC.

Florida 56, Troy 6
Note to self: Always pick Florida to cover. Always. Any other idea you may have is stupid.

One of the games I did get to watch a good chunk of was the USC/Ohio State game, which was a contest of some bad offenses. I’m not really sure why anyone even talked like this would be the game that Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor finally arrived as one of the big time players in college football. Anyone who has watched Pryor play quarterback should have known he wasn’t going to play well because he’s not a good quarterback. Outstanding athlete, yes, quarterback, no. Watching him try to pass and read coverages is just painful. It sort of reminds me of the illustrious Brent Schaeffer era at Ole Miss (for the record I think Pryor is a better athlete). Schaeffer was forced into a pro-style offense that wasn’t suited for his talents and when he did play, played poorly. And it didn’t help the coaching he received could best be described as poor.

Now, if you remember the last two games of his last year at Ole Miss, the Rebels finally started running a form of the spread/run option offense that really cut down on his having to read defenses and allowed him to use his athletic ability. That offense ripped LSU up for 400+ yards of total offense (even though LSU kicked the crap out of Ole Miss) and was highly successful the next week against Mississippi State until Ed Orgeron decided to play super conservative until the infamous fourth and one play in which he needed to be super conservative and wasn’t.

Pryor has better coaching (at least I think he does) and more talent around him on both sides of the ball than Schaeffer had at Ole Miss, so why not run an offense that plays to his athletic strengths? He’s faster and sometimes bigger than the linebackers chasing him, has a pretty strong arm and has great natural strength. If used properly, he would be a nightmare match up for defensive coordinators. Lining him up under center or using that stupid fake draw pass play out of shotgun is what opposing defenses want to see from Ohio State.

And Ohio State should take heart, this is the second game in a row versus a top-ranked BCS school in which they were not blown out of the building. Luckily for them, the rest of their season is filled with Big 10 teams, Toledo and New Mexico State. So look for them in the Fiesta Bowl.

And as for USC, let’s put an end to all these cries of the next great one for quarterback Matt Barkley. It was obvious that for most of the game the USC coaches were terrified of letting him take any sort of chances downfield. I thought he played well given the conservative nature of USC’s game plan and play calling, but I think we should all see a little more before we declare him the next great quarterback in college football.

UCLA 19, Tennessee 15
I blacked out, what happened? Were we just taking at length about Ohio State? Not sure what happened there. Anyway, welcome back to reality Lane Kiffin. Life sure was easy against the Western Kentucky’s of the world.

Remember all that talk about the new and improved Jonathan Crompton? Well, that was just silly. He still stinks. I thought Tennessee played this game much like they should play every game. Rely on their defense, run the ball and hope your quarterback can make a handful of good throws. Unfortunately for them, running the ball is much harder against teams with a degree of talent who also know you can’t throw the ball.

And make no mistake about it, this UCLA team is not very good at all. They were 4-8 last year and I saw nothing that indicated they were going to be much better than that this year, much like Tennessee. But the good news for Tennessee fans is that their defense appears to be a pretty good one, which should prevent Florida from scoring 70 this week.

Alabama 40, Florida International 14
It should be noted that Alabama has now surrendered 65 total rushing yards on the season. 64 of those came against Virginia Tech.

LSU 23, Vanderbilt 9
It appears the cure for LSU’s defense was the Vanderbilt offense and some rain. Everything I read about this game noted that the rain really slowed both teams down, LSU more than Vandy. Not much to say here other than LSU played well enough to win and deserved to win. I’m really looking forward to their game at Georgia on October 3rd. They’re better than Georgia right now, but I want to see what happens when they play a team that is in the neighborhood of their skill level because then we’ll have a real understanding of this LSU team.

Georgia 41, South Carolina 37
So not only does Georgia’s offense stink their defense does too. 427 yards to a Stephen Garcia led offense? And he even threw 53 times, which should always mean good things for opposing defenses. This is the one game of the weekend I wished I had been able to see because looking at the box score I have no idea how South Carolina lost. Georgia had fewer yards, more penalties and had the ball for nine fewer minutes. Someone go check to see if Steve Spurrier has finished vomiting yet.

Auburn 49, Mississippi State 24
Speaking of bad offenses and defenses, it’s Mississippi State. We all know State’s offense is bad, but to give up 390 yards rushing to a team that can’t throw the ball is awful. If this poor run defense turns into a trend for State and with the schedule they have, a 2-10 season is a serious possibility.

And my apologies for labeling this game a bloodbath of punts. I should have called it a bloodbath of Auburn first downs.

SEC Picks of Week 2

2009-09-10T12:17:00.002-04:00

Made while watching Ricky the Alabama fan shatter the YouTube record for comedy. Even Kige Ramsey’s awkwardness and unintentional comedy can’t touch this.

(LANGUAGE WARNING)

Let’s see what we have here.

Redneck? Check.
Racist? Check.
Anger Issues? Check.
Wearing large amounts of Alabama flair in home? Check.
Limited vocabulary? Check.
Belief that Alabama can do no wrong? Check.
Women cursing in the background? Check.

And I thought there would never be anyone that could top Cowboy.

Last week: 11-1
Season: 11-1 (.916)

Troy at Florida
I’m only vaguely interested in this game for reasons involving point spreads. There’s no doubt Florida will conduct a wholesale slaughter of the Trojans, but I want to see what Troy has on offense. If you recall the last few seasons, Troy has had some outstanding offenses and because of this, was a covering machine. In fact, I want to say two seasons ago they were something like 11-1 against the spread, which is cash money in your pocket (if gambling were a legitimate enterprise looked favorably upon by the NCAA). If the Trojans put up some points, I’d keep an eye out when they run into the Sun Belt teams.

UCLA at Tennessee
Question: How does one lose a game when the opposing quarterback throws four interceptions? Simple. You elect to throw 41 time with your below average quarterback and ignore your two running backs who would end the game AVERAGING 7.4 and 5.5 yards per carry. That’s what Phil Fulmer allowed offensive coordinator Dave Clawson to do in last year’s 27-24 overtime loss to UCLA. Now, both those guys are no longer employed by the University of Tennessee (although they are still receiving handsome paychecks from Tennessee).

As poorly as I think of Lane Kiffin and Ed Orgeron, I don’t think those mistakes will be made again. Last week against a hapless directional school, Jonathan Crompton, the player some Tennessee fans wanted to kill (literally), was only allowed to throw 28 times. If he’s allowed to top that (barring turnovers and Tennessee falls behind), Kiffin may find himself in the unemployment line much faster than I predicted. The Vols win an ugly, ugly game.

Florida International at Alabama
God help Ricky’s family if FIU jumps out to an early 3-0 lead. He’ll probably burn the house down with them inside. Then, after he steals a map from a local convenience store, he’ll find his way to Tuscaloosa and blow the brains out of the referee who missed a holding call on FIU’s scoring drive. Good times.

Vanderbilt at LSU
The revamped, no-huddle Vanderbilt offense exploded last week for over 600 yards of offense against what had to be an awful Western Carolina team. The revamped, well-coached LSU defense gave up 478 yards to a team that had one player (the quarterback) and won zero games last year. This could turn into an interesting game if Vanderbilt can keep from committing the soul-crushing turnovers they so often have against every team in the SEC but Ole Miss (in their last two wins over Ole Miss, Vandy is +4 in turnover ratio). I find it hard to believe Vandy could go to LSU and win, but I foresee things getting a little shaky for LSU before the Tigers go on to win.

South Carolina at Georgia
Steve Spurrier said earlier this week that he plans on being a little more aggressive on offense than he was against NC State. This, of course, means that Stephen Garcia will be given more opportunities to make bad decisions that might cost his team the game, which will in turn lead to him possibly doing something really dumb off the field. We all win in this scenario. Who isn’t ready to see him take his property crimes to the next level?

As for the actual game, I think Georgia could be in some serious trouble, not just this weekend, but for the rest of the season. Take a look at this. Even Mark Richt senses something is amiss. And Joe Cox, doesn’t care about his critics, but does care enough to address them and pull out the old “they’ve never played a down of football in their lives” argument, which always goes over well. A crappy performance this weekend and you’ll be able to feel the fan’s sense of impending doom in the stadium, even if Georgia wins.

I’d love to take South Carolina here, but then I remember their game last Thursday night. And I cannot in good conscience select Stephen Garcia to win on the road. Georgia wins and challenges Tennessee for the ugliest win of the weekend.

Mississippi State at Auburn
From the few moments of the Auburn game I saw last last weekend, they appear to have a much more competent offense than whatever it was they had last year. Of course, they were playing Louisiana Tech, which probably helped. The same goes for Mississippi State. A much better offensive showing, but it was Jackson State, who I’ve now had three separate people tell me was “the worst team I’ve ever seen.”

I think we’ll see yet another defensive orgy, which will take place not because of outstanding defensive play, but because mediocre offenses will run into stronger defenses. And because I think Auburn’s offense is a little stronger than State’s, which I think is pretty bad, Auburn should come out of this bloodbath of punts victorious.

From the Long Weekend That Was

2009-09-08T12:40:00.001-04:00

South Carolina 7, NC State 3
Much like my suggested rule that Ohio State never be ranked again or receive media attention for slapping around the smaller schools of Ohio, my idea that South Carolina or NC State never be allowed to open the college football season again will most likely be ignored. Although it shouldn’t, since I’m right. South Carolina has given us such greats as this year’s win, last year’s 34-0 game which was equally as boring and who can forget the exciting 15-0 win over Mississippi State just three years ago. It’s time for this business to stop.

And, holy crap, NC State is just awful. If you’re scoring at home, which may be difficult for NC State fans since they have no examples provided by their football team, that’s three points in two years on season-opening Thursday night games.

Kentucky 42, Miami (OH) 0
Do you think that when Miami Hurricane fans are watching the bottom line scores come across on ESPN they are temporarily terrified of the result they see until the OH appears? I think I would.

Tennessee 63, Directional School 7
After the destruction of a Sun Belt school, Lane Kiffin still isn’t letting up. According to his Twitter account, today is COMPETITION TUESDAY!!! (Note: This is not to be confused with David Cutcliffe’s “Get Better Monday.” And I have a feeling that after his Blue Devils’ loss to I-AA Richmond, he’ll be ordering a “Code Blue” on Wednesday.) If you’re familiar with Ed Orgeron’s body of work, that statement reeks, I mean REEKS of Ed Orgeron. Let’s see how fresh the Vols are in week eight or nine when they’re still going 200 miles an hour three days a week. The more influence he has, the more enjoyable the Kiffin era’s fall will become.

Oklahoma State 24, Georgia 10
If Georgia has a quarterback and the officials elected to referee this game as a football game and not a touch football game, perhaps the Bulldogs would have been in a position to win. For those who may have missed it, Oklahoma State’s last touchdown came on a drive that was kept alive by an unnecessary roughness penalty on a Georgia defensive back after he destroyed a Cowboy wide receiver who was trying to catch a pass. When he was hit, the receiver still had a hand on the ball. Violent hit? Yes. A penalty? Only at the YMCA.

As the Sean McDonough, the announcer, said, “If you’re going to throw a flag for every hit that looks bad, you might as well play flag football.” Well said, sir. Of course, if Joe Cox weren’t absolutely horrible, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Mississippi State 45, Jackson State 7
According to a friend who was there, “Jackson State is the worst football team I’ve ever seen.” For the purpose of fantastic comedy, I would have loved to see how Sylvester Croom would have fared in this one. State still would have won, but it would have been along the lines of 24-7 and disgustingly ugly.

And my apologies to Dan Mullen (as if he cares) for besmirching him based on the idea that Anthony Dixon would play. I will also refrain from writing the backhanded compliment I had ready to go. But know that I did have one.

Arkansas 48, Missouri State 10
HOUSTON NUTT WOULD NEVER HAVE SCORED 48 ON MISSOURI STATE!!!

Auburn 37, Louisiana Tech 13
Chizik is now four wins away from double digits in career victories after 25 games as a head coach.

Florida 62, Charleston Southern 3
If you’re curious, the Charleston Southern nickname is the Buccaneers. So file that one away.

Vanderbilt 45, Western Carolina 0
Two of the country’s worst offenses last year, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, combine to score 90 points. By comparison, it took Vandy two games last season to reach the 45-point mark, and through its first four games of 2008, Mississippi State had a total of 57 points scored.

Alabama 34, Virginia Tech 24
Hey, guess what? Tyrod Taylor is awful, just like every Virginia Tech quarterback since Michael Vick. Who saw that coming? The Hokies are another team that should never be ranked in the top ten before the season ever again. If Alabama had a stronger quarterback and decent special teams play, they win this game by at least 21. And when Virginia Tech is winning the Orange Bowl in January, just be sure to remember they stink.

As for the debut of Greg McElroy, color me unimpressed. Granted, he was going against a solid defense and was still able to help crank out almost 500 yards of total offense, but I never saw anything that made me think he’s going to be much better than he is right now. He’ll improve, but not by much. And I think we’ll also see Alabama be little more risky or aggressive on offense thanks to complete confidence in a really good defense. A defense like theirs will help control whatever mistakes are made on offense.

LSU 31, Washington 23
Speaking of unimpressed, here’s LSU. The defense that was supposed to be totally revamped now that all of that talent was being properly coached gave up 478 yards of offense to a team that was 0-12 last year. Jordan Jefferson? Blah. Maybe it was the trip to the West Coast, but LSU doesn’t look the part of a team that could make a run at Atlanta.

Ole Miss 45, Memphis 14
The day I am remotely upset with a 45-14 win, please shoot me in the face (and don’t miss). Yeah, it was a little frustrating watching Jevan Snead crap the bed for a little over three quarters, but I never got the sense we were in danger of losing the game. The defense picked up where it left off last year, really shutting down the Memphis offense. Other than the fourth quarter touchdown drive and the drive where Memphis missed a field goal, they really had no consistency. The defensive line got stronger as the game went on, especially Jerrell Powe, and the secondary has made a transformation to a group of guys I don’t even recognize. Shit talking, aggressive AND they put points on the board with Fon Ingram’s interception return for a touchdown. The last time we saw something like this was in the Billy Brewer era.

Other than Snead’s early struggles, it’s hard to really criticize much. The play calling was extremely basic so there’s not much to pick apart on offense. I thought the offense line played well at times, not so much at others, but for the first game, I’ll take it. Snead was not murdered by a vicious hit so that’s a victory in my book. I think we’ll see much more two weeks from now when they travel to Columbia.

SEC Picks of the Week

2009-09-03T17:46:00.001-04:00

For the first time in three weeks a spectacular video of Europe is not starting out a post in this spot, which depending on your affection or lack thereof of the band, can be a good or bad thing. I will miss my daily search for yet another video of the song that makes no sense. There’s nothing like a countdown in which it’s never mentioned what we’re about to reach. Easily one of the most confusing songs of all-time. But awesome.

So now that college football season is upon us, it’s time for me to break out my favorite post to write, my weekly SEC picks. You may hate them (possibly the picks themselves and reading someone pick games), but know that I thoroughly enjoy doing this. Probably a little too much. Anyway, if you’ve never read this before, I go through all the SEC games for the week, make a few comments that rank from absurd to blindly ignorant to spiteful and hopefully select the winner. These picks are made free from any sort of point spread because the NCAA tells me gambling is borderline illegal even though they require schools to publish weekly injury reports. Plus, any thoughts I have involving point spread winners will be kept to myself for my financial benefit and not yours.

Last season, I slapped together a 64-19 record (.771) and was headed for an .800 season until a last week debacle sent me under .800. So my goal this season is to crack the .800-mark, which can be done if I break my habit of choking at the worst time possible.

South Carolina at North Carolina State
Last season, this game opened college football and we saw the Gamecocks destroy NC State 34-0. This season, I don’t see it being that bad, but as far as I know (and I know nothing about NC State) the Wolfpack aren’t going to be much better and South Carolina could be slightly better or slightly worse. In short, I have no idea. And yes, you can expect this detailed analysis all season long. I’m taking South Carolina here.

Kentucky at Miami (OH)
As I mentioned yesterday, Kentucky could be a sneaky team in the SEC this year. Not that they’re going to dominate, but it’s entirely possible that in the last week of November you’ll look at the SEC standings and say, “Wait, Kentucky has eight wins?” They have three for sure loses Florida, Alabama and Georgia, but every other game is completely winnable. I’m very interested in this Kentucky team. It’s entirely possible Miami could be one of those 10-2 MAC teams (how would I know, I don’t do research), but I’ll take Kentucky.

Directional School at Tennessee
I struggle to put into words how excited I am about the rise (which has already happened) and eventual fall of the Lane Kiffin/Ed Orgeron regime. As I’ve written before, my money is on midway through the 2010 season. Good times are indeed ahead. Vols win.

Jackson State at Mississippi State
Anthony Dixon is suspended for a game. He’s suspended for a half. He might actually play. He’s going to start. Dan Mullen certainly comes from the Urban Meyer school of discipline. Also, he doesn’t want to get fired. State avoids a Maine disaster.

Georgia at Oklahoma State
Big 12 school with an all-world offense getting lots of hype going against an SEC school that is underrated and has a defense that’s much better than anyone Oklahoma State has seen. Does this sound familiar? Something to do with the Cotton Bowl. And I remember Florida playing in some other game in which they defeated a Big 12 team. I’m sure it was nothing. Georgia it is.

Missouri State at Arkansas
Hopefully, Arkansas can avoid a UL-Monroe near-disaster.

Louisiana Tech at Auburn
One person Gene Chizik will not be calling for some thoughts on Louisiana Tech is Sylvester Croom. Auburn’s win will account for one-sixth of Chizik’s career wins.

Charleston Southern at Florida
Blah.

Western Carolina at Vanderbilt
Anything is possible with Vanderbilt when they’re favored in games. It’s the underdog role that allows them to play well. I say Vandy avoids a devastating loss by a narrow margin.

Alabama vs. Virginia Tech
Much like Clemson was last year, Virginia Tech is an ACC team that gets way too much hype for not being that good. They’ve made their national reputation on beating other ACC teams and losing to any team that’s even remotely good. Their offense stinks, they have no quarterback and they’ve lost their top running back. In the past five seasons when Virginia Tech stepped outside of the ACC and played teams in BCS conferences, they’ve piled up a 6-6 record with two of those wins coming over mighty Cincinnati.

Oh, they’ll go 10-2 or 9-3 because they are the best of the mediocre in the ACC, but look for them to get crushed against Alabama. The speed of Alabama’s defense is something they last saw when LSU dismantled them 48-7 in 2007. This won’t end well for the Hokies.

LSU at Washington
Oh, to be able to see those from Louisiana colliding with the good folks of the Pacific Northwest. What a show that will be. What won’t be a show is this game. LSU dominates.

Ole Miss at Memphis
Normally, I’m terrified of this game, but a strange calm has come over me the past few weeks. I realized Memphis really isn’t very good and that they’re not used to playing against the speed they’ll see on defense and offense on Sunday, and barring multiple turnovers on Ole Miss’ part, this one won’t be close. Well, that and I remembered a clueless Ed Orgeron defeating Memphis three straight years. The only thing that would make Sunday better than a crushing Ole Miss victory is a crushing Ole Miss victory followed by the dismissal of the hack that is Tommy West.

The Final Countdown: 1

2009-09-02T18:58:00.002-04:00

We finally made it to the end of this damn countdown. We’re one day away from college football season, which coincides with beginning of sloth, gorging and a high degree of emotional stress. And I, for one, can’t wait. So representing the last number of our countdown, I give you my SEC predictions and the one team that will leave Atlanta victorious.

These predictions are full of generalities, a small dose of research and a following of SEC football with the intensity of one of those stalkers about which states eventually make laws to protect their targets. If I confuse any numbers, names or other general information, it’s simply because my mind is about to explode. And partly because I don’t care about any other team but Ole Miss. My apologies to your team. And yes, this site is free.

EAST

1. Florida
According to everything I’ve read, Florida will sort of be like Ivan Drago, everything they hit, they will destroy. And I tend to agree. Everyone on defense is back and it’s a defense that after the loss to Ole Miss (maybe you heard about it) gave up an average of 13.1 points a game. That went along with an offense that averaged something like 117 points a game the rest of the way. I think this defense will probably challenge Alabama for the best in the conference.

On offense, there’s some guy named Tebow who’s allegedly pretty good. Not sure about that. The question marks on offense are can they effectively replace three offensive linemen, including the right tackle (protecting Tebow’s blind side) and Percy Harvin. I’m not so much concerned with the loss of Harvin as the Gators have like 27 more fast and talented guys waiting to play, but the offensive line could make them a degree below bulletproof. Their visit to Baton Rouge could be the end of a perfect season, especially if they struggle to find competent line replacements.

2. Georgia
The Bulldogs have about as favorable a schedule as you can have in the SEC. They get LSU and South Carolina at home (and of course have to play Florida), and their only dangerous road game could be at Arkansas before they figure out what they can and can’t do on offense. Joe Cox is allegedly a member of a plethora of game manager quarterbacks that are in college football, so in order to avoid any upsets, he’ll need to not screw things up. There’s young talent on offense and the offensive line should be pretty solid so anything above average from Cox and Georgia could be a pretty tough team.

Defensively, they should be strong, but then again, if you recruit like Richt has, they should have some players there. To me, this season is a defining season for him. If he pulls out a nine or 10 win season with this bunch, I’ll reconsider my 2200 words that declared him the most mediocre coach in the SEC.

3. South Carolina
Any chance the Gamecocks have at finishing behind Florida is ruined by their schedule. At Georgia, at Alabama, At Tennessee, and Florida and Ole Miss in Columbia. 1-4 there would be pretty good considering what Steve Spurrier has. A talented, but erratic and often dumb quarterback playing behind an offensive line that was awful last year and might not be much better this year. If South Carolina can’t run the ball with any success, this could be a long year in Columbia. If I had any faith in Kentucky or Tennessee, I’d put one of them here.

As for defense, all signs point to it being a little worse than last year’s, which wasn’t bad, but not great. If the defense can’t get any help from the offense, I will again question why I continue to put South Carolina this high every year.

4. Tennessee
Biggest problems: At Florida, at Alabama, at Ole Miss, Georgia at home, no quarterback, Ed Orgeron, Lane Kiffin, very thin offensive line, not much on the defensive line.

Biggest strengths: Everyone but Florida in the East is beatable and outside of the defensive line, the rest of the defense should be solid.

I really don’t see the Vols being much better than last year, and I wouldn’t expect more than 5-7.

5. Kentucky
If the Wildcats develop some consistent offense, they might prove to be a little feisty. And by that, I mean challenge Tennessee for fourth in the East. If you have to play Florida and Alabama, you want them at home and Kentucky does. I don’t think this will influence the win/loss column, but from a point-spread standpoint it might.

Defensively, Kentucky will be weak on the line, but fairly strong behind that. If they can hold up against the run, the defense could propel itself into the average category and, combined with a more experienced offense, they could pull off a couple of wins they shouldn’t.

6. Vanderbilt
In order to ramp up an offense that was one of the worst in college football, Bobby Johnson has installed a no-huddle, spread attack. That’s nice if you have a quarterback, which, as far as I know, is not on the Vanderbilt campus. The defense returns nine starters and should be the rock of the team, like every Vandy team since 1912. Don’t be surprised if Vandy leads the SEC in 11:30 kickoffs this season.

WEST

1. Ole Miss
That’s just terrifying to see that. Truly terrifying. Before you start accusing me of blind loyalty, allow me to make my case. First, the schedule. Alabama, LSU, Arkansas and Tennessee all come to Oxford. The toughest road games are a Thursday night trip to South Carolina and a trip to Auburn. No other team in the West has a schedule that favorable. Second, an established, experienced, talented quarterback. No other team in the West has that. Third, defensive line. No other team in the West can match the talent there. Alabama could make a case, but they don’t have the depth Ole Miss does. Fourth, experience at every defensive position. Alabama is the only other team that can say that.

As for the weaknesses, offensive line depth. Even Houston Nutt has admitted that this team is a couple of sprained ankles away from being mediocre. As I have stated many times, if Ole Miss develops eight competent offensive linemen, they should beat every team they play in the regular season. Second weakness, cornerback. Yes, Marshay Green certainly came on at the end of last season, but everyone else is average to slightly above average. Can anyone really trust Cassius Vaughan? But the cornerback position is based heavily on confidence and if this group plays well early, they could become a strength.

As for the argument that Ole Miss has never been here before, that’s not really a strong argument to me. If you recall the end of last season, this team developed a sense of confidence I’ve never seen in an Ole Miss team. They knew if they didn’t have dumb turnovers, they were going to win. So they know what it takes to win. Yes, more teams will be geared up for them, but again, they know what they have to do to beat teams they’re better than.

2. Alabama
If not for going to LSU and Ole Miss, I think Alabama might have taken the number one spot here. They’re defense should be one of the strongest in the conference, although I’m interested to see who takes over leadership after Rashad Johnson’s departure, and of course they’re going to be extremely well-coached. My biggest problem with them is at quarterback and offensive line.

Recently, I heard Eli Gold, Alabama’s radio play-by-play announcer, say that Greg McElroy is a game manager type (buzzword!) that probably isn’t as talented as John Parker Wilson was. If I’m an Alabama fan, that’s a big, fat gulp right there. An inexperienced, lesser-talented version of Wilson behind an offensive line that won’t be as good as last year’s. That group has to replace three guys, the most underrated of which was center Antoine Caldwell. Losing three members off the strength of your team is going to hurt in some way the following year. I think the Tide is a year away from being a legitimate top five team.

3. LSU
At Ole Miss, at Alabama, at Georgia and Florida at home. A 2-2 finish there would be impressive and I think that will be a stretch for this team. As I’ve said before, Jordan Jefferson may be talented (I haven’t seen it), but he’s not good enough to win the West. Les Miles won’t play conservative offense with him and Jefferson will make tons of mistakes (remember Jarrett Lee last year). He’s got talented running backs and receivers, but I don’t think he’s ready to be an SEC quarterback. If he improves, LSU could be pretty tough at the end of the season.

As for defense, John Chavis takes over a talented group. Or so I’ve heard. In the last six games of the regular season, LSU surrendered almost 22 points a game. Granted, many of those could have been off Jarrett Lee interceptions returned for touchdowns, but the defense wasn’t very good. Unless Les Miles pulls a Nick Saban and goes super conservative on offense, LSU won’t be in Atlanta.

4. Arkansas
Holy crap, what a schedule. At Alabama, at Florida, at Ole Miss, at LSU and Georgia at home. 1-4 would be outstanding here. If they can get anything out of their defense, which was the worst or one of the worst in the SEC last year, they might sneak up on some people. That is if Ryan Mallett proves to be worth anything.

He’ll need some major help on his offensive line since he’s not been blessed with any foot speed. One would think he’ll bring more to the table than one of the Dick brothers, and if he does, Arkansas could be an interesting team, especially as Mallett gains experience. If he sucks, forget about everything I’ve said. Their battle with State for fifth and sixth will be fun to watch.

5. Auburn
Gus Malzahn’s offense was brought in to breathe some life into a disastrous offense from last year. Unfortunately, Chris Todd is operating that offense. Defensively, they should be much better than people think, but with a schedule that looks like this, at LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, it won’t really matter. Oh, that and Gene Chizik is still in charge.

6. Mississippi State
An excellent group of teams comes to Starkville this year, unfortunately they’re all really good teams. LSU, Georgia Tech, Florida, Alabama and Ole Miss all come to Starkville, and barring anything crazy, all will win. Dan Mullen will have a tough year ahead of him, he’s got no quarterback, a bad offensive line and a defense that will probably be worse than least year’s. At worst, I can see a 2-10 season, and at best they can somehow claw their way to 5-7.

SEC Championship Game
Florida over Ole Miss

The Final Countdown: 2

2009-09-01T17:57:00.000-04:00

And then there were two. 12 teams will compete for two spots in the SEC Championship Game, one will represent the West, the other the East. In true teaser fashion, you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out which teams I expect to see in Atlanta. My predictions promise to be full of scientific research, effort, stats, numbers and well-crafted sentences, while free of any biases or blind loyalties. Or maybe not. Find out tomorrow.

Until then, I leave you with some less-than-successful duos of the SEC...

Ed Orgeron and Ethan Flatt
Ed Orgeron and Michael Spurlock
Ed Orgeron and Robert Lane
Ed Orgeron and Seth Adams
Ed Orgeron and Brent Schaeffer
Ed Orgeron and Noel Mazzone
Ed Orgeron and Dan Werner
Ed Orgeron and Patrick Willis
Ed Orgeron and McKinley Boykin
Ed Orgeron and Garry Pack
Ed Orgeron and Robert Russell
Ed Orgeron and Hayward Howard
Ed Orgeron and LaMark Armour
Ed Orgeron and LeRon King
Ed Orgeron and Quentin Taylor
Ed Orgeron and Michael Herrick
Ed Orgeron and Jerrell Powe
Ed Orgeron and winning
Ed Orgeron and enunciation
Ed Orgeron and his neighbors
Ed Orgeron and offense
Ed Orgeron and defense
Ed Orgeron and kickers
Ed Orgeron and coaching
Ed Orgeron and football