SEC Overview

The South:

Palm trees, cotton fields, a toothless albeit well-armed population, lots of Jesus. We've all heard the stereotypes, but what is the South really? I'll give you the palm trees and the cotton fields........and the guns (myself included). The region has become the saviour of the American Auto Industry (or at least foreign cars built by Americans), the bastion of obesity, and the poster region of College Football. Many outside the south love to badmouth the SEC, but you must admit, we do deliver season in and out. The solid, well-funded and (for the most part) well-coached teams coupled with the intense intra-conference rivalries among the teams always produce great games, high attrition, and usually ensure that the top SEC contender for the national title has at least one loss, as it should be.

What will the SEC deliver this year? A lot of the usual. New Blood (a fresh Alabama QB with a veteran Offense to help him and a solid D to back him up). Old Blood (that Florida QB who scares secondaries and foreskins alike). New coach dynamics (who's coaching Auburn these days? Chjhhiuizzckkk? ). Plus a much more even field. All the teams across the NCAA are increasing in talent, evening the playing field, providing more exciting TV and pissing off Tony Kornheiser. That being said, the SEC isn't exactly what it was over the past several seasons, but it's always a force to be reckoned with. All in all though we'll have great fooball to watch and surely some humor to go along with it. How can you not with Vern Lundquist at the helm of the spotlight SEC games. I definitely know that I can't wait for the season to start.

SEC EAST

Florida (1)

Unfortunately being a slave to proceeding alphabetically forces me to place Florida with the number one spot on the list. So, have you heard about this quarterback at Florida named Tim something or other? I understand all SEC coaches are now considering the circumcision as the ulitmate dexterity training tool to provide their quarterbacks just that extra bit of finesse and twirl to their spiral grips. The latest rage: in a recent interview Tebow announced that he's saving little Tebow for marriage. Isn't that nice? Amazing quarterback, amazing athelete, humanitarian, virgin, accomplished moyel. Stay tuned for the passing of the Holy Kidney Stone. The end of the road for him will probably be either the Presidency or the release on youtube of a video of him uncontrollably filling a hot tub with loose stool, a la season 5 of Nip/Tuck.

But I digress. Florida was ranked as the pre-season #1 by everyone except Steve Spurrier, but that's just because he had his Athletic Director vote for him. What does this mean? Barring an asteroid collision or Obama suspending college football until Congress passes his healthcare bill you can probably hold your surprise if you see the Gators in the Georgia Dome at the end of the season and most likely with a chance to defend their national title. Their offense speaks for themselves and they have a 2-deep corp of veterans returning on D. Their season is a joke, opening with the Pay-Per-View destined one-two punch of Charleston Southern and Troy (at least we don't have to watch them play until Sept. 19 when they take on Tennessee). Unless we have a surprise upset like my favorite Ole Miss game ever last year, don't expect Tebow to be crying in any more sideline clips or press conferences, Georgia and Florida State offer up the only real statistical competition this season.

Georgia (16)

Should Stafford have gone to the Lions? Who knows, at least we have a Georgia QB with a last name that no one could possibly ever make a joke about............Cox. Georgia's got a must-see opener against Oklahoma State which will help most of America decide if Cox's limited playing time last year helped at all and will set the pace for the rest of the season. Mark Richt has announced that he'll be giving a lot of his freshmen playing time. We'll eventually find out if this speaks from confidence or desperation. Their front line's a little uncertain, but they've got a good D Line and watch sophomore running back Caleb King to be the workhorse of the O.

Their season's a lot tougher than Florida's, so attrition could potentially take a toll on the Bulldogs this season. It'll definitely be interesting for those of you who are excited to see lots of Cox between the hedges.

Kentucky

I just finished my first year of living in Louisville and it's been entertaining to say the least. First of all UK and LVille fans hate each other, but a respectable hate. Nothing like Alabama - Auburn where civil arguments can end up looking like the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan. The most amusing aspect though is all the talk that takes place the first two weeks of the season, when talk is then promptly shifted to basketball (the big football news around here is that UK and Western Kentucky Univ just signed a 4 year series deal.............need I say more) Interestingly, I see a lot more NFL fans than NCAA football fans around here, which is the exact opposite to my former haunts in Tennessee.

The Cats have a brutal schedule. Games 2 - 6 are LVille, Florida, Alabama, S. Car, and Auburn and they wrap the season playing Georgia and Tennessee. (No Western Kentucky this year, Eastern Kentucky Nov. 7, mark your calendars). They will field 11 men on both Offense and Defense.








South Carolina

Oh Spurrier, how could you leave something as important as selecting the All-SEC team to your AD? How dare you prevent Tebow from getting his unanimous election!! You're lucky that visor already covers your circumcision scar.

The Cocks..everyone's favorite mascot, ended with disapponting loss to Iowa in the Outback Bowl last season. Is there hope for Spurrier this season now that the bad odor of Chris Smelley is gone? He's sending in his sophomore Garcia who did a great job sending in signals last year. Even though "stop when police say stop" isn't in his playbook, there are a lot of eyes turning to him in the hopes he can make USC a contender in the east. A packed schedule and a still shakey offense will help decide. Oh yeah, he'll also need to stay sober and out of jail.I think this season will help improve things for the Gamecocks, but there will most likely be lots of head-set throwings by the visored one.

Tennessee

UT has one of the bigger storylines this off-season. Can Lane Kiffin turn things around after the Fulmer Dynasty has come to an end? He's off to a great stop with several near-misses involving SEC rules and recruiting violations. Nevertheless, they did end up recruiting this year's top-rated prospect and the buzz is working its way around Knoxville with hope that "Rocky Top" will mean something again.

High expectations are obvious as UT went bowlless last season for only the second time since 1990. Their opening SEC matchup comes with Florida. It'll be interesting, Kiffin's definitely the pledge in the SEC coachs' fraternity so he'll need a big win to get any props. They've got a balanced, but tough schedule, so it's going to be up to the veterans to step up. UT is still deep within its recruiting, so it seems that the focus is more on the future rather than this season. You can always feel safe in the hands of a Raiders coach.

Vanderbilt

Their first bowl visit since 1982, the year of my birth, and a win over a Flutie-less Boston College. How about that? They'd be on their way to a conference championship if they weren't still Vandy. Historically the other bitch of the East next to Kentucky, Vandy was aided last year by a falling Vols program.

"It (respect) comes with that. You know, if we continue to get better, I think people will know that we're just not an automatic win any more and we can be considered a contender for a championship if we continue to improve." How can such stirring words from your coach not make you feel confident in your abilities as a football player?

"We expect to compete for championships. To tell you the truth, we weren't really that far from it last year. We were third in the East, fifth overall. We think that's great progress for us."


SEC WEST

Alabama (4)

Roll Tide! Ok, now that I've said that relax. I'm a Crimson Tide fan, but i'm not one of the fanatics who thinks that the spirit of Bear Bryant guides the hands of all our players and coaches and that we're destined for the national championship every season, but I still love to see my team do well. Did you know that Alabama has 12 National Championships (half came from Bear Bryant). He would have 7 if not for that ugly scene involving the governor and federal troops.

An undefeated regular season left high expectations for Saban this season. Expectations left even higher after losses to Florida in the SEC Championship and Utah in the Sugar Bowl. The Offense will miss John Parker Wilson, who left with just about every QB record available, but it was time for some new blood in the QB slot anyway. The big question is whether junior Greg McElroy is the man for the job. Die Hard fans will tell you that he had a great showing in the A-Day Game this past spring, but that doesn't mean anything until he dresses against a contending team that is not the 2008 Auburn Tigers (War Eagle!). McElroy will get help from his phenom receiver Julio Jones and from his veteran line, but does the veteran factor count without Andre Smith?

Be sure to catch the season opener against Virginia Tech in the Georgia Dome. The defense will be solid as always with Mt. Cody plugging things upfront and a great secondary in the back. I think the Tide's got their work cut out for them, but with their existing talent and a favorable schedule, they've got a great chance to take the West again and meet Florida in Atlanta for a rematch. With the number 1 recruiting class this season, they'll be great to watch for the next several seasons as well. Roll Tide Roll!!

Arkansas

Oh the Nutt-less Razorbacks. A rough middle of the season is going to be hard on Arkansas this year while they continue re-building. It's bad when the only real news about your team in the past few weeks is a DUI arrest. I don't think anyone's really expecting much out of the Hogs this year, but they're always good for a surprise and could end up giving someone a speed bump this year.

Auburn

I remember frantically switching between AM stations trying to stay tuned into the Iron Bowl while driving home from Thanksgiving last year. If there's anyway to break a long losing streak it's by a bitch-slapping shutout on your home field. A lot is expected of Auburn this year, but will the new coaching staff be able to deliver. After the 5-7 season and the Tuberville debacle, Auburn is sort of in limbo these days. They've got the desire and the talent to return to their place as a perennial contender, but how many seasons will it take? I think their first loss will tell the tale. Will the team and their loyal fan base be able to bounce back or will they think it's a repeat of last season? Their initial hurdles of Mississippi State and West Virginia (23) will help paint the picture.

Auburn Sucks

LSU

My girlfriend is from Baton Rouge (Texas fan). Man did I make a mistake wearing my Alabama hat going down there to visit her once in the fall of '07. i didn't think I was going to make it out of the airport alive or without gumbo shoved up my backside.

Ok, Saban beat them on their home ground in a great game. Can we put this media angle to bed now? Thanks. Everyone's looking for LSU to improve upon their somewhat disappointing season last year. A lot will depend on how their QB's have improved, as it was their biggest sore spot last season. A new D-coordinator may give SEC offenses something new to deal with, but I think it may be a Jeff Fisher defensive year for LSU, "bend but don't break". I think we can count on the Tigers to come to the field with a lot of energy and 4-quarter intensity as they have in the past, but making it work may be too much to improve this year. Especially with Alabama and Ole Miss being as tough as they are. Their season lineup should help them out though, as long as they can avoid injuries and imprisoned players.

Miss. State

Everyone loves an underdog. I can't help but watch MSU play and want them to win each time. They're usually good for one upset a season and personally I would love to see that come against Florida. A man can dream. Dan Mullen was Urban Meyer's O-Coordinator once upon a time, hope he has some tricks up his sleeve. The Bulldogs have often been a game of drives. One drive they'll look like a well-oiled bowl bound machine. The next drive will be something out of Little Giants, complete with the Annexation of Puerto Rico.

There are no real names coming out of their roster (2 players on the All-SEC team, both second team). It worked for the Titans last year, could it work for the Bulldogs??

Ole Miss (20)

Had the Rebels been 9-4 since the Jackson administration??

The Nutt-bags are the team everyone's anxious to see this year. They did the impossible and beat Florida by stopping Tim Tebow, can they do it again? Florida wants to swat that monkey off their shoulders for sure, but the Rebels want to back up their Fredericksburg with a Chancellorsville (had to throw in a historical reference somewhere). The only thing that would make that possibility more interesting would be if they actually got to play each other this season. Instead, Mississippi has one of the easier schedules which gives them a great chance to give Alabama a run for their money in the West.

Nutt has brough much needed pride and discipline to Ole Miss and has given them the best chance for their first-ever visit to Atlanta. The only real weakness is a lack of depth which will require freshmen to be utilized, but that's nothing new with Ole Miss's program.

I have a funny feeling we'll be seeing Florida and Alabama for a rematch this year in Atlanta. I don't think anything's standing in Florida's way (except God, I hope I pray). Alabama is going to have to want it more than Ole Miss and LSU. Either way, i'm afraid we haven't heard the last of Tim Tebow. Too bad the Lions aren't hiring anymore.

Book Review: "Meat Market"

Our second installment in what may be a 2 part series of college football book reviews is Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting by ESPN’s Bruce Feldman. I think Feldman is one of the more knowledgeable people in sports writing today because he is one of the few people who can analyze both games and recruiting. In Meat Market, however, he focused solely on one aspect of college football, recruiting, in order to pull back the curtain and give readers some insight into how coaches go through the process of acquiring talent.

In the book, Feldman follows Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron from Signing Day 2006 to Signing Day 2007. Orgeron is a living legend when it comes to recruiting. He helped build the defense of the great Miami teams of the 1990s, he was the head recruiter for Pete Carroll this decade as USC became the dominant team in the nation, and at Ole Miss he was trying to build a program more or less from scratch in arguably the toughest conference in the country. In fact, one of the book’s great strengths is that it really captures what it must be like to spend a year with a man like Orgeron: constantly chugging red bulls, driving from country home to country home in search of the next star, and watching tape of high school players every time he sat down. The climax of the book comes during the end of the 2006 season, when Orgeron makes a run at star tailback Joe McKnight.

As a football fan, this book makes one thing abundantly clear to you: college football is still ultimately about talent. While parity may be on the rise due to scholarship reductions and greater national tv access for smaller teams, at the end of the day scheming and coaching means little because the team with the best athletes will almost always win. Orgeron certainly buys into this maxim throughout the book. There isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t spend at least the entire morning watching tape, plotting strategy, and making phone calls to recruits with the rest of his coaching staff. What was most surprising to me was that even the night before games on the road, he insisted the team hotel set up a projector so the coaches could continue to watch tape. While I understand Ole Miss is anything but a power when no one named “Manning” is waking up passed out, naked with a penis drawn on his face out on The Grove on Sunday morning, that obsession with recruiting seemed over the top. I mean, if I was a player on the 2006 Runnin’ Rebs (though based on their record, shouldn’t they be the Runnin’ Deb(utante)s? Snap! Count it! Word plays are fun and insulting!), I would really be pissed to find out my entire coaching staff was preparing for next year rather than the game I was playing in tomorrow. Guess that’s why they went winless in conference that year, maybe good coaches do actually coach. Wait, did Mack Brown and Joe Pa make it to BCS games? Never mind, recruiting is all that matters.

The other amazing thing about this book was the whole Joe McKnight phenomenon. Throughout the book, McKnight is trying to decide between staying in state and going to national power LSU, or to join the up-and-coming Rebs and Orgeron. Then, suddenly and completely out of nowhere, Pete Carroll seems to suddenly realize McKnight is a 5 star recruit a month before signing day. SPOILER ALERT: McKnight ends up at USC. It really just showed how amazing USC’s rep is at this point. While every other school recruits kids for 2 or 3 years, USC waits until the last month because they know they are already every high school kid in the country’s #1 choice. They recruit players as much as Zack Morris “laid groundwork” with women, in the sense that Zack really just walked up to any piece of strange he saw walking around Bayside High and had his way with her.

What is disappointing about this book, however, is that it is more of ethnography than anything resembling muckraking journalism. Feldman paints an entertaining picture, but if you are looking for the chance to learn about the seedy underbelly of recruiting, do not look to this book. Feldman seems solely interested on reporting what he sees without any sort of judgment, to the point that at times, seemed more concerned with justifying his subjects than analyzing them. There is one moment in particular where a player had narrowed his choice down to Ole Miss or Mississippi State the day before National Signing Day. While he was at school, coaches from both schools just sat in the player’s driveway, waiting for him so they could get the last word in before the player made his decision. This seemed to be the perfect moment for Feldman to ask, “Wait a minute, why the hell are 4 grown men waiting like a high school girl on prom night for some 17 year old guy to say he likes them? What is going on here?” Feldman, however, refuses to make any sort of judgments like that at any point in the book.

Overall, it is a solid read and an entertaining book that shows you how coaches obsess over recruiting, but not necessarily the most eye-opening piece you’ll ever read. I’d borrow it or wait for paperback.

Book Review: "War As They Knew It"

In order to bridge the gap between the end of another riveting College World Series (did they have that this year? Is that the one in Williamsport with all the pedophiles in the stands?) and the start of FOOTBALL season (note: caps used to convey excitement and manly grunts), we here at Office Tailgate are trying a couple of new things to fill all this down time. One of them is a review of college sports-related books and to let you know whether they are worth your time and hard earned dollars. I’ll start off with a review of War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest by Michael Rosenberg.

This is a great book and a must read for all Big 10 fans out there (and by a quick show of hands, when I include myself that makes . . . carry the 1 . . . 2 of us). The book follows two simple themes. First, it is a story of two dominant personalities that were as contrasting as they were similar: legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes and legendary Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler. It follows how Bo was initially supposed to take over for Woody at Ohio State, but spurred Woody to take the Michigan job and reawaken the Wolverines into one of the most dominant teams in college football history. It also marks how these two men started as friends, later became heated rivals as they rebuilt the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry and transformed it into national theatre as the “10 Year War,” and then became friends again after Woody’s retirement.

Simultaneously, it is also the story of a country in the middle of a profound cultural shift in attitudes and behavior. The book opens and constantly refers back to the campus unrest of the late 60s and how it visibly affected politically active Ann Arbor, but also changed the more conservative Columbus as well. The schools and the student body shifted in terms of race, drug use, recruiting strategies, and view of their coaches as the World War II vets of the “Greatest Generation” faded away and were replaced by the more self-absorbed and entitled “Baby Boom Generation.” The irony of the story here is that while Woody Hayes was much more well read and was dealing with a more conservative campus than Schembechler, Woody was unable to adjust his style to the times which ultimately led to his embarrassing and public firing as football coach in 1979.

The book is great because it shows the origins of many phenomena that we enjoy and hate today. First of all, the book shows just why coaches today are so much younger and “player friendly” than coaches in the past. We think coaches like Nick Saban are tough, but read this passage: “Hayes turned and rammed through the first two rows of players [during a halftime speech], then attacked with such force than [fullback Jim] Otis’s Coke popped up in the air. As he pounded away, Hayes screamed that Otis would never play for Ohio State again.” Are you effing kidding me? He punched a kid in the face repeatedly! Umm, yeah, think you’d get arrested if you knew that not only your coach would literally beat the shit out of you during a game, but that your teammates would also support the coach during the fight? That would never happen today, and Rosenberg makes a compelling argument that it is because of the generational change of the 1960s. The new generation of players became “me first,” so new coaches had to emerge that would shelter, coddle, and feed the egos of this new generation of players.

The second thing Rosenberg points out is that certain bowl debates are not new. First, of all, he makes pretty clear that the Big 10 has always sucked in bowl games. None of the other major powers have to play in such terrible weather for such a long portion of their season, so the Big 10 has always had a style of play that was designed to win the Big 10 first, anything else second. When you read Rosenberg’s book, if you substitute “power I” for “wishbone” and “Spread” for “West Coast Offense,” you’d think you were reading about the 2009 bowl season. It makes clear that it isn’t that some teams are faster than others, rather the problem with the Big 10 is that the cold weather forces teams to develop a style of play that is slower because of the cold and snow. Rosenberg did not make any links between the Midwest’s traditional isolationist stance in American politics and their lack of concern of bowl performance, although he may as well have.

We can also see the origins of the BCS in this book. The book charts how Michigan AD Don Canham single-handedly transformed college sports in the 1970s. Before Canham, most college football teams broke even financially, only one game was played on national tv per week, and a team could only appear on national tv once per regular season. Under Canham, however, Michigan athletics transformed into a financial giant by expanding not just the stadium, but introducing branding of team apparel and granting TV crews unparalleled access to teams to maximize exposure. His vision made him the most important and influential person in college sports, and when he argued that the bowl season would make more money than a playoff in the 1970s, that ended the playoff argument for 20 years. It’s a great way to put our current BCS debate in historical perspective, as well as shed light as to why the BCS supervisor said this week that if the BCS goes, there will be no playoff, just a return to the old bowl system. It’s all about the Benjamins.

Like I said, great book. If you like history and football, it’s a quick read that you will not put down until it’s done.

A sad end to a fascinating QB. I always thought it would be the knees that would get him.

R.I.P. Steve McNair