Tuesday, October 18, 2011

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

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comparing Chizik to McCartney is the most irresponsible comparison this side of comparing Houston Nutt to a football coach. Auburn's miscreants aren't anywhere near the level of McCartney's thugs.

Questioning the constant God references is valid though. I have a saying - "If you have to go out of your way to tell me something is true, it's probably a lie." If someone asks you why you are juggling QBs and you take that as a cue to babble about how religious you are, that tells me you are only religious when people are looking at you.

Speaking of QBs, I am quite surprised to see Chizik go into full 911 panic like this. Not only is he panicking, he's putting the blame in the wrong place. You field a team with only 2 legitimate Division I WRs, and when they both get hurt and your passing game goes into the crapper, you blame the QB by benching him? Good thing we have Misipi and Samford on the schedule, where Chizik himself could suit up as QB and we'd still win.

So nice to see Mr. CBC up to his usual tricks. Love to see him lose his mind. Eventually, he's going to have a full-on Mike Gundy moment and I hope I get to see it live.

Anonymous said...

Agree with J. Auburn typically has relatively honorable teams, even if the boosters are cheating.

UGA also typically is a very clean program, they have just had some bad apples a few years ago that they seem to be rid of now.

UT is the team of miscreants. Hope Coach DD can clean it up. It is a shame when a few football players (and a b-ball coach in this case) hurt the reputation of an othewise outstanding institution.