Check out the big brain on John.

What would Pi Day be w/o our own version of 3.14? Miss @HMason14 & @TG3II ; wish all Dawgs the best on Pro Day 3/18! pic.twitter.com/ZVMctjgzgp

— John Lilly (@JohnLillyUGA) March 14, 2015

LOL.

Benign neglect

“I was very involved defensively at Florida and regardless of popular opinion I wasn’t as much on offense,” Muschamp said with a chuckle. “Should have been, but I wasn’t.”

No shit, Sherlock.

In fact, since Tebow’s departure, the Gators have had just two individual 300-yard passing performances in the last five years. Brantley threw for 329 yards against Furman in 2011, and Tyler Murphy threw for 305 yards in a home loss to Vanderbilt in 2013.

If you’re Georgia Tech, that’s no big deal.  But for a team that runs a traditional offense – you know, the kind with quarterbacks who throw the ball to receivers – that’s amazing.  And for a program that cut its teeth bringing the passing game to the SEC, that’s pathetic.

Part of me thinks Florida will bounce back this season better than I tend to give it credit for, simply because there’s no way McElwain can be as inept putting together an offense as Boom was.

(P.S.  To save some of you astute observers the trouble, yes, I know, 38-20.  Thanks.)

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“It all just creeps me out.”

It sounds like Lennay Kekua may have an imaginary cousin in Mississippi.

Kinda embarrassing for Hugh Freeze, eh?

An early look at strength of schedule

Phil Steele breaks it down according to the NCAA rankings, which is just a raw analysis based solely on opponents’ won-loss records from the prior season, regardless of quality.  Steele calls it a “good starting point”, but that may be a little generous.

The returning National Champion Ohio St Buckeyes play 4 non-conference opponents in Virginia Tech, Hawaii, Northern Illinois and Western Michigan this year. These 4 teams finished last season 7-6, 4-9, 11-3, and 8-5 for a combined 30-23 record. Add that to the record of 56-46 which is the combined total for Ohio State’s  2015  Big 10 opponents from last year giving you a total of 86-69. In the chart below you will find that OSU ranks #42.

Meh, in other words.  But it’s a list!  And it’s early March!

So note that Georgia’s 2015 schedule ranks tenth on that list.  The only SEC East team facing a tougher opponents’ winning percentage is Kentucky, at number five.

Steele does make a good effort to shed a little more illumination on the list, by compiling the number of games each team has against schools that had winning records last season, schools that were bowl eligible and schools that were ranked.  Here’s how the East looks with those, in descending order of NCAA SOS:

• Kentucky – 10/9/5
• Georgia – 9/8/4
• South Carolina – 8/9/5
• Tennessee – 9/8/4
• Vanderbilt – 10/9/4
• Florida – 8/8/5
• Missouri – 8/8/2

Roughly comparable, except for Missouri’s low number against ranked teams.  (Which is another reason to consider the Tigers one of the favorites in the East this season.)

By the way, no team in the SEC West plays less than five games against 2014 ranked teams, and three – Alabama, Arkansas and Auburn – play seven of those.

Now of course the usual caveat of past performance not being a guarantee of future results applies here, so the real question about how meaningful these numbers are depends on whether the East improves this season from its collective 2014 showing.  And we won’t know that for a while.