What we think we know -- Week 8

**Forget that his undefeated team has hardly taken a punch, Nick Saban is locked in. The Alabama coach cut loose with a couple of S-bombs during his press conference this week. He didn't exactly go "Old Ball Coach" on the assembled reporters, but he certainly showed his Little Nicky side when asked a series of questions he thought stupid (and a couple of them were). He apologized -- Saban issues some of the lamest apologies in the history of sports and apologies. But as long as Saban beats Tennessee this week, he has nothing to worry about. You know what they say about the marathon ... at 20 miles, you're halfway home. It's the last six that will kill you. The same goes for the Alabama schedule. The Tennessee game will be a romp, then comes a bye week, and the defining stretch of the schedule begins. LSU visits in two weeks. Then it's SEC road trips to Mississippi State and Auburn. Then it's the SEC Championship Game. No wonder Saban is wound a little tight. He knows he has a special team this year and he has little time for distractions like press conferences, civil conversation, sleeping or eating. For now, we're told, he can still find his way home.

**Have we ever seen the SEC weaker? Two-and-a-half good teams in the entire conference. When is our lifetimes have we seen Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Auburn all have a simultaneous down year? In Oxford, they're starting to dream of a winning season with the same nostalgia once reserved for the Civil War. Mississippi State has yet to win an SEC game, and South Carolina, well, after the loss of Marcus Lattimore, let's see what Steve Spurrier still has in the tank. That leaves Georgia, which appears to be the weakest pretender out of the East since Dukakis. Alabama and LSU still give the conference enough street cred, since one of them is an overwhelming favorite to vie for the SEC's sixth straight national title. Still ...

**Strange season. Is it just me or has 2011 just limped along? Sure, we can look ahead to Nov. 5. But there's been so little buzz about most of the games that we can step outside and hear Will Muschamp screaming. Besides, whatever happened to Boise State? Still undefeated, sure, but not much being said about the Spudheads.

**What is it about coaches and God? The more they cite the Almighty, the more we should check the jail log. Let's consider the two head guys most public in their spirituality. That would be Chizik ("It's a God thing") and Georgia's Mark Richt. Funny thing, though, Richt's 2010 team took the Fulmer Cup, betowed to the football squad with the most arrests. And Richt's defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, last seen offering free Heimlich training to Florida's kicker, was face to face with Vandy coach James Franklin after Saturday's close Bulldog win. The SEC was not charmed. Chizik? His team is neck and neck for this year's Fulmer award, just as it finally got untangled from another man of the cloth, Bishop Cecil Newton, who admitted trying to sell his son to Mississippi State. The ying and yang of it all harkens to former Colorado coach Bill McCartney, who helped start the Promise Keepers while his players ran amok all over Boulder. How's this for a promise, coaches. Keep your players in line.

MG