I was reading a blog by one of the few people who has bothered to comment on a wordpress blog of mine. He wrote a blog illogically denouncing the SEC and he has Georgia as the SEC’s best team. In reflecting upon how wrong this is, it occurred to me that Georgia should not even be considered the best team in the East, particularly if both Florida and Georgia finish with one loss apiece. I’ve now left two comments on his blog to discuss this.

Just to avoid any idea of bias against them, I actually like Georgia. After Kentucky and Vanderbilt, who I mostly favor as regular underdogs, Georgia has been my favorite team in the East. I can’t think of a recent instance where I didn’t cheer for them against Florida, Tennessee, or South Carolina. I guess I’m more neutral with Tennessee now, but I remember being very annoyed on the Bulldogs’ behalf that Tennessee won the SEC East in 2007, and I was definitely for Georgia before that. So I’m being consistent now that the team I like less deserves to play in the game and will not be able to.

As an aside, I also like newcomer Missouri—I remember cheering for them many times as underdogs against teams like Nebraska and Oklahoma—but I knew no matter how many losses there had been by A&M and Missouri, the first time one of the two got a breakthrough win, people were going to say, “Aha! The SEC defenses aren’t so good after all. Look at that Big XII team go!” And that’s exactly what happened when Texas A&M, despite falling flat offensively against LSU and Florida after going out to early leads, finally managed to win such a game against Alabama. So I’m not quite in solidarity with the new Tigers and the Aggies just yet.

There is a fan interest that has made me passionate about this issue, and that’s being a fan of LSU. As you may have noticed, Florida has been pretty good for about the last 25 years, and they’ve played LSU in all of those years. Every single one of them. Does LSU get any consideration if they tie for something as a result of this? Win or lose, the answer is no. So when I see that a team like Florida, who played LSU and Texas A&M, is being passed over by Georgia, who instead played Ole Miss and Auburn, I sympathize with Florida even though I like Georgia much better.

Georgia earned a win over Florida, don’t get me wrong, but don’t forget South Carolina beat Georgia handily. The only reason we’re not looking at a 3-way tie right now is that unlike Florida, South Carolina didn’t win its game against LSU.

Full blog

I’ll post my top 25 blog later in the week, but I have updated the LSU/Mississippi St. rivalry post and released my weekly computer ratings.

After the impressive first six teams of the SEC, a lot of commentators look down the standings and seem to focus on programs in decline. People are wondering what is going on at Arkansas, Auburn, Tennessee, even Kentucky (which was on the verge of bowl-eligibility last season). But I think it’s been overlooked that Vanderbilt has become bowl-eligible for the third time in five years. Their 2008 appearance against Boston College had been their first bowl game since 1982.

Things were looking so bad at one point that in 1995, LSU actually hired Gerry DiNardo, who had been the Vanderbilt coach, because he had accomplished the feat of winning 5 games in a season there not once but twice. I guess that was harder to do when it was an 11-game season though, to be fair. Only once in the following 10 years would Vanderbilt win 4 games or more (going 5-6 in 1999).

Something is different this year though. When Vandy went 6-6 in 2008, they had lost 6 of 7 going into the bowl game, only becoming bowl eligible in a close game against Kentucky after having lost three similarly close games (to Mississippi St., Georgia, and Duke) in consecutive weeks at the beginning of a 4-game losing streak.

In 2009 and 2010, Vandy started 2-2 and 2-3, respectively, before finishing with 2-10 marks in both seasons.

Then last season, the Commodores started 3-0 only to finish 6-7.

This is also the fifth time in eight seasons Vandy has won 5 games or more. In 2005, Vanderbilt won the first 4 games before losing 7 in a row then beat Tennessee in the finale. In 2007, the ’Dores started 5-3 then lost 2 games by a touchdown or less (either of which would have made them bowl-eligible) as they ended the year with a 4-game losing streak.

Granted, this was partly because the end of the season has a lot more conference games than the beginning does, but I think it was more than that. I think that confidence and killer instinct goes away, and it’s more a sense of “not again” and playing not to lose game after game.

This is the first time I’ve seen Vanderbilt as the team that’s making things happen rather than having things happen to it.

Full blog

Top 25

rank / team / prior

1 Notre Dame 1

2 Alabama 2

3 Ohio St. 3

4 Kansas St. 4

5 Oregon 5

6 Florida 6

7 Georgia 10

8 Oregon St. 9

9 Louisville 7

10 S Carolina 11

11 Clemson 16

12 Nebraska 18

13 Florida St. 12

14 LSU 8

15 TX A&M 23

16 Stanford 13

17 Toledo 14

18 Texas 22

19 Oklahoma 24

20 La. Tech –

21 N’western 19

22 Rutgers 21

23 SJSU –

24 UCLA –

25 Miss. St. 20

Out of rankings: (15) TX Tech, (17) Boise St., (25) Tulsa

Full 124 permalink

Before my usual top 25 run-down and other notes, I wanted to express my condolences to the University of Texas and its fans for the passing away of Darrell Royal yesterday. I had mentioned him less than two weeks ago in my blog about records and winning percentages of Les Miles and other prominent coaches. Many of the coaches on my list of historic greats are long gone, but some of the ones still alive (most of whom, unlike Royal, made their names in the 1980s and 1990s) are Lou Holtz, Dennis Erickson, Jimmie Johnson, Tom Osborne, and Barry Switzer. At least a couple of the honorable mentions are still around too. For example, Vince Dooley turned 80 a couple of months ago, and Frank Broyles (about 6 months younger than Royal) is expected to turn 88 next month. Broyles and Royal were close friends despite the rivalry at that time, and Royal’s career also overlapped with Switzer’s.

I was also interested to note that Royal attended the University of Oklahoma, where he played for Bud Wilkinson, another coach on my list. Royal intercepted 18 passes in his career with the Sooners, still a school record, particularly impressive given the reluctance of many to employ the forward pass at that time. Perhaps not coincidentally, he is famous for the statement, “Three things can happen when you pass, and two of ‘em are bad.” He also was a successful part-time quarterback.

Before becoming the head coach of Texas, where he was known for installing the wishbone offense, Royal briefly coached at Mississippi St. (whose series against LSU I profiled here) and Washington. In his 23 seasons as a college head coach (1954-76), none of his teams ever had a losing record.

If you missed the link above, what follows is my top 25 run-down and other notes.  (I also include links to prior rankings there.)

I think my only other blog this week will be for the top 25. Feel free to check out my updated Alabama rivalry post or the Mississippi St. one. I personally like the Mississippi St. one better.

As a Tiger fan, I’ve never been more sickened by two games in a 10-month period in my life than LSU’s two losses to Alabama this year. I’ve been sickened by, for example, losing 9 games in the 1992 season, but I can’t think of two specific games as frustrating in that short a period of time. That period of time (that was one of 6 consecutive seasons without a winning record or bowl game for LSU) seemed to last a lot longer since it lasted from ages 7 to 13, by the way.

The cumulative losses to teams like Alabama and Florida still get at me, so something like this just re-opens old wounds. I’d be better able to blow it off if we had finished 14-0 last year of course. As I mention in the rivalry blog, there is a difference of opinion as to LSU’s main rival, but for me there is no question it’s Alabama. I’m not as crazy about it as the average Auburn fan probably is; but still, if they could win only one game, I’d pick that one.

Also, for some strange reason, I’m cursed with knowing a bunch of Alabama fans. I lived in Louisiana my whole life until moving to California in 2004, but I guess because someone thought alleged football championships would translate into a good education, a few people from my high school went there, and then some home-grown Bama fans (at least they have an excuse) went to my undergraduate school.

Of course the offense in the bowl game was just useless, and the coaching staff did nothing about it. It’s a miracle that LSU was within two scores until late in the fourth quarter in that one…. But at least I didn’t have much hope for a win as the game went into the second half. What made that really bad was the effect it had upon 13 games that otherwise would have comprised the best season in generations if not the best season in LSU history. And it also gave Alabama (and Nick Saban) another national championship to claim in a year in which LSU went to Tuscaloosa and beat the Tide no less.

Today’s game unfortunately forced me to have hope even though I had written it off as a loss before kickoff. LSU was moving the ball, getting first down after first down with the lead, and for some godforsaken reason, apparently it was decided to settle down and kick a field goal (which was missed… the reason LSU won the regular-season game last year was Alabama’s repeated settling for field goals they had a good chance of missing) with a minute and a half left. But if you can move the ball with pass plays when the defense knows you’re going to have a pass play, why not keep doing it when the defense is unsure and perhaps even expecting runs? You don’t have three boring runs in the middle of the field. And then on defense, how could they not be prepared for a screen pass? Alabama is like the Bill Cowher Steelers with that play. It’s mind-boggling. I was too frustrated to notice, but if the approach to defense changed for the winning Alabama drive, that was foolhardy too.

Full post

I’ll start off by mentioning a couple other writings of mine that might provide some interesting backstory. I wrote the first last week about Les Miles’ record at LSU, but it also compares his record to that of other coaches, including Saban’s at LSU and Alabama. Then of course there is my blog about the LSU/Alabama rivalry, dominated for decades by Alabama but controlled by LSU for much of the first decade of the 21st century before becoming competitive again of late.

This is unrelated, but I also wanted to share a couple of links about Marcus Lattimore. Spurrier got a bit of criticism for his sort of backhanded acknowledgement of Dabo Swinney’s kind words about Lattimore. Dabo didn’t go quite as far as “Hog Lady” though. The SEC isn’t just great defenses and running backs, you have to love the fans and personalities as well.

Back to the important goings on, we do have two of the most successful active head coaches with their current programs facing one another, and of course LSU was fortunate to have had them both.
If you’ll look at the stats I gave in the Les Miles blog, I think it’s an even bigger coaching match-up with Urban Meyer at a new school and with Pete Carroll in the NFL. It’s harder to argue there are other guys doing as well or better.

There was a time where the Red River Rivalry had two coaches that were at about the same level Miles and Saban are now, but I think both Texas and Oklahoma have gone a little downhill in recent years. And there was never a point where that game featured two programs with a combined 3 national championship and one runner-up in 5 seasons, with of course one runner-up in that time (LSU last year) as well. (It took 10 seasons for Oklahoma and Texas to accumulate two national championships and three runners-up between them; two national championships and one runner-up took place in the six seasons between 2000 and 2005.)

Of course, when Urban Meyer was still at Florida, his game against the Tigers in 2009 represented 4 combined championships since 2003. So that was bigger at the time, especially being that Saban hadn’t won one at Alabama yet.

Saban and Miles followed similar trajectories on their way to LSU. A little bit of NFL experiences, but they were hired from being the head coaches at second-fiddle state universities. I don’t mean to take anything away from them, but the great programs in Michigan and Oklahoma are not the ones that end in “State”, although Sparty has a little more of a substantial history.

I wanted to talk about Miles vs. Saban head-to-head and mention a few notes about the series overall before assessing this season’s game.

Continue to Full Post, including "Miles vs. Saban" and "Game Notes and Preview"