28 Days
Ten Most Important SEC Games
10. Miss St @ Auburn 9/10
Miss State wants to say hello to the world. Auburn wants the world to take its new team seriously. This is also the opening conference game for the SEC West.
9. LSU @ Miss St 9/15
Thursday night on national TV. LSU plays three meaningless out of conference games including a trip to Dallas to face a top 10 Oregon team and a trip to Morgantown to play West Virginia. Smudged in between these games is an important SEC battle against Miss State. If Miss St beats Auburn, it could make a serious explosion in the SEC if they beat LSU just five days later. LSU can’t get caught focusing on their tough nonconference slate and lose to a hungry Bulldog team.
8. Auburn @ Arkansas 10/8
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29 Days
I didn’t realize that kickoff is less than a month away. It doesn’t feel so far away.
I also didn’t realize that….
1. Florida’s stretch of tough games is worse than Auburn’s October.
We’ve heard ad nauseum that Auburn faces the toughest schedule in the country. We’ve heard that October for Auburn is the toughest stretch of games in history with 3 out of 5 games being on the road against tough opponents. Does the fact that a month is easily measured (although an arbitrary measurement) affect the predictions for Auburn’s demise?
Analyze this:
Sept. 24 @Kentucky
Oct. 1 Alabama
Oct. 8 @LSU
Oct. 15 @Auburn
Oct. 29 @Georgia
Nov. 5 Vanderbilt
Nov. 12 @South Carolina
Their bye week falls before the Georgia game, but make no mistake about it. No matter what section of the schedule you look at, it’s daunting for the Gators.
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35 Days
“Dude! Come check this out! Someone just posted 27 pictures of what looks like could maybe possibly be a serious or not serious NCAA violation by our rival!”
“Hang on, man! You first have to come look at this news story about a rumor of a secret source speaking through a 5th party to a local call-in radio show about a player being purchased for an exorbitant amount of money!”
The reactions to these statements are always the same. Excitement leads to expectations, and when those expectations aren’t met immediately, vitriolic hate becomes the fuel for conversation.
By no means am I about to speak about why the NCAA should get rid of its rule book and let universities fight to the death to obtain the signatures of high school athletes. I’m also not going to explain why we should ignore the current allegations against numerous schools in the NCAA. I’m not even going to really blame the unofficial investigators who stumble upon this information.
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38 Days
Vanderbilt Preseason Preview
“The way I look at it is we have an opportunity to do something really special at Vanderbilt. We have an opportunity to differentiate ourselves. I really believe there’s very few schools that are going to be able to compete with us when it comes to recruiting because we have an opportunity to offer things that very few schools can.” – James Franklin.
Franklin won the Spirit Award at SEC media days as no other coach entered Birmingham with as much enthusiasm as him. This is a coach that has taken over the nation’s most difficult program and has made wild accusations that he may actually turn it into something special.
And he’s absolutely on point when he says that Vanderbilt has the potential to do so.
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