Thursday morning buffet

For a dead period, there’s sure a lot of stuff going on in the college football world.

• Here’s a rundown of the starting quarterback situation in the SEC.  It’s kinda laughable to call Tennessee’s QB situation settled (not that I’m complaining), but overall it’s not a bad summary.
• And here’s a look at Georgia’s quarterback derby.
• While we’re on the subject of quarterbacks:  Virginia Tech fans, you’ve had the Vick brothers as starters, yet you’re directing your venom at Sean Glennon?  Nice.
• Despite the loss of Tim Tebow, Aaron Hernandez and Riley Cooper, the Florida offense is destined for greater things this season.  Right.  Who’s gonna pick up those tough third-and-two conversions this year?
• Speaking of the GPOOE™, guess which Super Bowl ad garnered the fewest viewers?
• Turner Gill’s going to get a Christmas card from SDSU’s administration.  They can afford the postage now that Chuck Long is gone.
• If you haven’t been paying attention, the G-Day game has been scheduled for April 10th.
• Marc Weiszer makes a good point about Georgia and Alabama being likely to throw a few more elbows at each other now on the recruiting trail.  (Don’t forget about Al Groh now, too.)
• “Long story short, 17 players caught balls for UGA last season. Fifteen of them are returning in 2010.” Good stuff.

Also, a housekeeping note – I’ve moved the post with the playoff poll to a permanent page (“Playoff Pulse”) because I think it’s useful to have a spot for people to comment on what they’d like to see in a football postseason and because it’s useful, even in a decidedly non-scientific format, for us to have an idea of what fan sentiment on the subject looks like.

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Your humble blogger is mystified by this.

It doesn’t happen often, but I am totally blown away by this quote from Richard Samuel:

On being back at linebacker, which he played in high school: “I missed it a lot. Being able to play free and not have to worry about certain fundamentals. ..I didn’t feel comfortable with the blocking. We didn’t block in high school.”

This is the kid, mind you, who wound up starting in an offense that we’ve been told ad nauseum places a very high premium on running backs who can block.  Now that’s not Samuel’s fault, but what in the hell were the coaches thinking?  What were they seeing in practice?  And what justified keeping Ealey on the bench until the middle of the LSU game?

Chris Low has too much time on his hands.

I like the way John Pennington describes Chris Low’s “pre-spring power rankings” post of yesterday.

You’ve got to give credit to ESPN.  They have their beatwriters making new lists day after day.  In fact, ESPN should just change their moniker to “LIST.”

Their shows are all list-based.  Their stories are all list-based.  They are the listingest listers I’ve ever seen.

And here’s their latest: Pre-Spring Power Rankings.

I mean, how dopey an exercise is this?  Florida doesn’t even have a defensive coordinator right now.  Several teams in the conference have to find new quarterbacks.  Alabama, Low’s number one team, has to replace nine of eleven starters on defense.  Florida, his number two team, by Low’s own admission, lost more talent than any other SEC team, yet winning 10 games “isn’t out of the question”.  Hunh?  Auburn’s getting ready to ride Cam Newton’s arm into greatness.  Hey, that worked out really well for Brent Schaeffer.  The list goes on (Low’s still got that mancrush on Bobby Petrino going).

Bottom line:  it’s waaaay too early to be trying to establish a conference pecking order.  It’s little more than a time waster, at best.

Mark Bradley, on the other hand, thinks it’s all good.  I rest my case.