2012 conference schedule is out

And here it is. It all starts Aug. 30 with South Carolina and Vanderbilt. 'Bama and Florida both get Missouri and Texas A&M. Enjoy.

Bowl games are upon us

The fun starts Friday for SEC fans. Below is the list, and to the right is the LSU-Bama poll.

-- Dec. 30: Music City Bowl, Mississippi State vs. Wake Forest

-- Dec. 31: Liberty Bowl, Vanderbilt vs. Cincinnati

-- Dec. 31: Chick-fil-A Bowl, Auburn vs. Virginia

-- Jan. 2: Capital One Bowl, South Carolina vs. Nebraska

-- Jan. 2: Outback Bowl, Georgia vs. Michigan State

-- Jan. 2: Gator Bowl, Florida vs. Ohio State

-- Jan. 6: Cotton Bowl, Arkansas vs. Kansas State

-- Jan. 9: BCS championship game, LSU vs. Alabama

Correction: Obviously spoke a little too soon. The fun started Monday for fans of soon-to-be-SEC Missouri. Texas A&M, meanwhile, plays Northwestern on New Year's Eve.

Early look at 2012

New teams. New schedule. But what to make of the teams?

Jess Nicholas of Tidefans.com offers these predictions on the 2012 SEC season.

Trending upward: LSU, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi State and Vandy. Trending down: Arkansas, South Carolina, Auburn, Tennessee and, gulp, Alabama.

The Newbies? Nicholas puts Missouri and Texas A&M among the down arrows. As Dean Wormer might have put it, That's no way to start life in a new conference, son.

Read more of Nicholas' thoughts, ratcheer.

MG

Wednesday morning readings

* With Oklahoma State left on the outside looking in, Big 12 athletic directors show support for a four-team playoff and a plus-one title game. Story by Andy Staples of SI.com here.

* Georgia gets a big-time RB recruit in Keith Marshall. Story from Raleigh News & Observer here.

* Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com hands out his end-of-year awards. Story here.

* Bruce Feldman of CBSSports.com lists the 10 biggest duds of the season. Story here.

Next time just check the lost-and-found box

We were just wondering where those titles have been hiding all these years when we saw this headline on www.olemisssports.com. Hope the new coach polishes them up a bit.

MISSISSIPPI MAN: FREEZE TAPPED TO RETURN TITLES TO OLE MISS

SEC's new St. Louis media outpost weighs in on BCS

If SEC football fans aren't familiar with Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they soon will be.

Since Missouri joined the party, Miklasz has been writing more about Southern football. And while he acknowledges an early addiction to the Paul Finebaum Show -- Courage, Bernie, there's help available -- he normally writes an informed column that's never short on opinion.

His take on The Rematch: Why the outrage?

Hugh Freeze to Ole Miss

It's official. Go here for the Ole Miss news release and to hear from Archie himself.

Freeze himself announced it on Twitter a couple of hours ago ...

I asked for a word from God, I found Jeremiah 29:11-14. I have taken the Head Coaching Job at Ole Miss, but it's not without a heavy heart.

And for the great unwashed among you, that passage goes like this ...

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

Who's bowl-bound and other thoughts

Who's going where:

-- Dec. 30: Music City Bowl, Mississippi State vs. Wake Forest

-- Dec. 31: Liberty Bowl, Vanderbilt vs. Cincinnati

-- Dec. 31: Chick-fil-A Bowl, Auburn vs. Virginia

-- Jan. 2: Capital One Bowl, South Carolina vs. Nebraska

-- Jan. 2: Outback Bowl, Georgia vs. Michigan State

-- Jan. 2: Gator Bowl, Florida vs. Ohio State

-- Jan. 6: Cotton Bowl, Arkansas vs. Kansas State

-- Jan. 9: BCS championship game, LSU vs. Alabama

For the record, that's 3 SEC-Big 10 matchups. That always makes bowl season a little more fun, though I wouldn't be all that surprised if the SEC didn't win a single one of them.

* Count me among those who wanted to see LSU-Oklahoma State. Here's why: If LSU were to defeat OSU, the Tigers would have played and beaten EVERYBODY (everybody in this case being the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th teams in the BCS, along with the teams ranked 16th and 23rd and a couple of other bowl teams for good measure). And if Oklahoma State were to win, they'd claim the title for beating the No. 1 team in the title game. (Besides, I have a bit of an easier time hearing Oklahoma State saying "We deserve a shot" than Alabama saying "We deserve another shot.")

* That said, now that it's LSU-'Bama, might I suggest this new motto for the Magnolia State: MISSSISSIPPI: BORDERING NATIONAL CHAMPIONS SINCE 2009.

* Congratulations to East Mississippi Community College, which claimed the national juco title with a 55-47 win over Arizona Western College in the El Toro Bowl on Saturday. (Story here.) Let's see ... No. 1 playing No. 2, on one team's home field (in this case, top-ranked Arizona Western) ... that all sounds vaguely familiar.

-- R. Trentham Roberts

The BCS Showdown and post SECCG edition

Update: The deal is done. LSU and Alabama finish 1, 2. The Rematch is on.


First things first: Congratulations to the University of Georgia. For one magical half, they made LSU look tepid and slow. They made Jordan Jefferson look like, well, the Jefferson of yesteryear. They made the Tigers' defense look disorganized. They took the fight to a bigger team and overwhelmed them for 30 minutes. They showed, particularly on defense, how much they've grown.

But they kept dropping the stupid ball.

In the end, the Bulldogs learned what every other team on LSU's schedule already knows. Get to the Les Miles' team early. Otherwise, the window closes. The vise tightens. The chances of victory, already small, become shards, and then shards again.

LSU is that good. Only one team has traded blows with them in the middle of the ring. That team is Alabama, which lost in overtime to the Bengals in Tuscaloosa, and at this hour appears to be the last detail standing before one helluva party breaks out in the bayous.

Ah, that last detail.

An imperfect system has one job: to pick the two best teams. This year, there are two teams with viable arguments for a single spot. Oklahoma State couldn't have asked for a better closing argument than the utter humiliation of its despised rival before a national audience Saturday night. But that will have to do for this year.

The computers and the human voters and coaches and the alchemists secretly manipulating the BCS data from some castle in the Balkans all had their say on Sunday. It appears the SEC will have its sixth straight national championship. It will still be five weeks, however, before we know which name goes on the trophy.

LSU's opponent officially comes out of the hat tonight on ESPN. But the tweets have been singing like cicadas throughout the day, and the din keeps pointing toward Alabama. Nick Saban's team had its shot, true. But his team played an almost identical season to LSU's. Alabama was every bit as dominant playing an eerily similar brand of football. On Nov. 5, one team made three field goals; the other made two. That's it.

Sure it's unfair for LSU to have played an extra game and now have to beat the Tide a second time. But as deserving a titleist as LSU would be, coronations for national champs went out when the BCS came in. No more bad matchups because of conference affiliations. The two best teams settle things. Period.

And that's what will happen Jan. 9. The two best teams from the best conference. Everyone else will be home watching. Even for the SEC, that will be a first.

mg