2011 SEC Preview: Can Marcus Lattimore truck the winner of a dogfight?
Most top fives you're seeing right now probably involve some combo of these teams: Oklahoma, LSU, Oregon, Alabama, Boise State, and FSU. Maybe Stanford or Nebraska or Wisco or someone is sneaking in there, or whatever. Let's break this down: 1 Big 12 team, 1 SEC team, 1 Pac-12 team, a second SEC team, a whatever-the-hell Boise State is, and 1 ACC team. Those are from the conventional six.
I just so happen to be studying for the GRE right now, and since probability is part of that exam, I can explain to you, rather adroitly, that there's technically a better chance of an SEC team winning the whole damn thing (2 of 6) than a team from any other conference (1 of 6 in four different instances). Now, of course, that math is spotty, and will lead me to completely bomb this exam in a few weeks, but let's not spend much more time on that; rather, let's talk about the SEC this season.
I was gonna do one of those team-by-team breakdowns, but to be perfectly honest, you can get that in a million spots on the Internet. So, I'm gonna address this in a much more succinct way, and then discuss bars for a few moments. I know you'll enjoy it.
The SEC East is Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbiilt. On paper, it appears the only legitimate threat to win that side of the coin is South Carolina -- they have a lot of legitimate dudes on offense and their D-line is loaded. Stephen Garcia could cause the entire thing to implode, but there may be too much on that roster to lose a weaker division. Tennessee will be better than you think, but they ain't winning the SEC East (they will win more than 6.5 games, though, so ride 'em in Vegas). Mark Richt will get fired after this year, probably. The other teams are not tremendously relevant, although the first year of Muschamp-Weis will lead to some YouTube sensations, if nothing else.
The SEC West is a goddamn dogfight. You have two of the top five teams in America -- LSU and Alabama -- and then Mississippi State (improved), Arkansas (lost Ryan Mallett and Knile Davis but still very good), and then Auburn (probably an also-ran this year) and Ole Miss (probably ditto). November 5th -- LSU vs. Alabama -- could be a semi-defacto (is that a word?) national title game in some respects. Arkansas is gonna sting someone; so is the Southern MSU. (Will Dan Mullen then get buzz for the Ohio State job? Stranger junk has happened.)
Here's what's gonna happen at the end: Alabama will win the West, and South Carolina will win the East. Since Alabama just came out of a dogfight of a division, we'll spend all week leading up to the SEC Championship Game thinking Spurrier can do something magical in the Georgia Dome. And then, uh, we'll remember last year (Auburn by over 40) and something similar will happen again, sending another SEC West team (this time, 'Bama) to the national title game.
Now, I mean, crazy stuff happens all the time in the SEC, and thinking that Mississippi State could be this year's Auburn isn't too amazingly far-fetched, so ... you never do know. But the smart money would be SoCar, Bama, Bama rout, SEC West team in the BCS title game.
Now, bar-wise? Most good SEC games are 3:30 kickoffs on CBS -- at least, past the middle of September. Week-to-week this is gonna vary (and week-to-week we'll tell you), but usually the other good 3:30 games are gonna be Big Ten contests on ABC/ESPN2 ("the reverse mirror"). In 90 percent of situations, if you are at a bar with audio, you will want the CBS feed audio, because Verne Lundquist, while quite old, still calls a hell of a game -- and Gary Danielson, while sometimes seeming like he wants to get down on the field and start knocking heads around, is pretty fun too. A sample of what makes them cool:
SEC games don't tend to get crazy good or interesting until the last weekend of September -- but, as with everything else, lock it here in the leadup to the weekend and we'll let you know where and what to view.
Join the Discussion