Greg Sankey knows what kind of week it was for his conference. To the spin machine, Batman!
“What’s the old cliché? Teams show more improvement from Week 1 to Week 2 than any other point of the year,” Sankey said. “I don’t think it’s a rough week. It’s a week in college football. We’ve played some great games and challenged ourselves the first week. That’s good for college football.”
And that was his take before Ole Miss’ meltdown against FSU. Guess he’s gonna need a bigger cliché.
Get The Picture 
New cliche….mo money, mo problems.
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Old cliche….mo money, no problem.
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The surprise SEC/ACC game was AU having Clemson on the ropes. The others I expected. That said, I pull for UGA…I hope AU and Ole Miss turn into dumpster fires.
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Didnt the SEC still get more wins vs Ranked teams than any other conference?
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The top of the conference isn’t bad, especially Alabama (duh!), but the bottom is awful. And the middle didn’t exactly impress.
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Dont get me wrong. There were some trash SEC teams this first weekend. Just saying if I was talking it up I might focus on the wins vs ranked teams and the trash fires.
There also seems to be a lot more “bottom” SEC teams this season.
MSST, Vandy, USC, Mizzou, and Kentucky are all bottom SEC teams.
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UF and UT didn’t impress either. This might be the third consecutive year that the SEC declines. It won’t last long, but for a league used to have multiple top ten teams, it’s hard to see a second top ten team right now. We could get there if our qb situation shapes up the way we need it to.
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And we have 4 of those in our schedule. Kirby is definitely a genius for taking the UGA post this year knowing how weak those 4 will be, LOL.
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I saw something…
Well, what did you see, Mr. Sims.
I saw a conference that looked like any other conference, Sir.
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Maybe Kirby’s gonna take a blowtorch to this place.
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Beat UNC, UCLA and USC….correct sir.
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After the first week, I can’t help but think that 8.5 O/U was easy money.
Mizzou, USC, Vandy, and Kentucky are all gimmes.
Auburn by the end of the season could be a real mess. Kelly will turn the ball over. Dobbs can’t go downfield, Florida has issues on the offensive side.
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My amazing wisdom in a few nuggets:
The bottom half of the SEC would fit nicely in bottom half of any Power 5 conference and possibly could not win any non-Power 5 conference, either.
To me, Auburn looks like it will not get its offense rolling in time to save Malzahn. Same goes for LSU.
A&M will be a good, not great team. They won’t challenge Bama in the West but could finish #2 or #3.
Ole Miss is a dangerous team, but I don’t think it will avoid some previously unexpected losses because it will be a dejected bunch after Bama rolls them likely worse than FSU did.
Tennessee is still a big threat to win the East if it survives a couple more weeks and gets into a season groove. That groove is not intimidating, however. Florida on the other hand is going to have to rely on great defense to win a big game. Luke Del Rio looks like a coach’s son that has transferred to two different schools and merely excited his fan base by not being Treon Harris.
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“The bottom half of the SEC would fit nicely in bottom half of any Power 5 conference”
The current computer consensus:
70 S. Carolina 48 T. Tech 59 Wash St. 66 Illinois 77 Syracuse
75 Mizzou 62 Kansas St. 60 CO 79 Maryland 80 Bost. Coll.
82 Vandy 93 Iowa St. 63 Arizona 90 Purdue 83 Wake F
92 KY 109 Kansas 100 OR St. 96 Rutgers 95 Virginia
Just guesswork at this point but if these rankings hold I’d say the SEC holds their own against everyone except the Pac 12.
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While the SEC had a bad weekend by SEC standards, the B12 must be the most nervous. Oklahoma lost convincingly, and TCU looked discombobulated – and those are your conference favorites. If Arkansas beats TCU (a huge IF), then the B12 is at real risk to be left out of the playoffs. If Arkansas and Tennessee lose, however, then… we’re still looking at a 1-loss SEC champion still being a lock for a playoff spot.
But the chirping from fans so thirsty for SEC schadenfreude will be deafening.
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my observation of the SEC teams has to do with the Smart apologists saying that 8-4 or 9-3 is what we should expect from this team. I say BS. Now that we have been provided evidence(i.e. a couple real games) None of the games we are giving the current team a pass on if UGA loses look to be that strong. UT not exactly overwhelming in beating App State, UF lets UMass hang around in a stunningly unimpressive win and Ole Miss looks to be as shallow as a bleach blond at happy hour.. The path to the SECCG is looking like anyone in the East with a decent team just has to stand up and take it. This is a decent team and this is the easiest schedule the Dawgs have seen in years. No Championships /No Peace.
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sample size.
but yeah.
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Kirby will keep only my meme that “Kirby is a genius”, only if we win the East, haha.
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Count me as one who lost all conference pride as soon as we added two mediocre Big 12 teams because of tv markets. I’m glad to see the rest of the conference struggle. All the better for us. We don’t have to worry about spinning anything. As long as ESPN has the SEC contract they’ll do all the spinning money can buy.
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I can’t say I lost all conference pride. But I was (and am) still scratching my head at the Mizzou add. I actually like the A&M add and consider it a net plus for the conference. Mizzou doesn’t make sense from any standpoint in relation to geography and tradition.
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A&M has a great fan base, but what is their tradition when it comes to actually winning football games at an elite level? My fan ship was more regionally based. I had pride in this area of the country. YMMV, but Texas is not in the southeast so I can’t get with them.
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A&M has won more games than Clemson, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Oregon, Stanford, TCU, Miami, UCLA, Baylor, Mississippi, or Florida State. They’ve won as many bowl games as Notre Dame and more than Virginia Tech and West Virginia, as well as many of the teams I listed in my first sentence. They’ve won the AP national championship. (Once, same as Georgia.) They’ve had 2 Heisman winners, same as UGA. They’re right in the middle of one of the most fertile recruiting areas in the country and yes, they bring in some major Texas markets. You might question Mizzou, but A&M is as solid a team as was available.
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If that’s your game then you also know that A&M has less wins than Penn, Harvard, and Princeton. All you’ve proven is that their program is old. Everyone knows than win totals are a terrible metric for measuring program relevance. Yale has more all time wins than Bama should we let them in the SEC?
A&M hasn’t won a conference title this century. Outside of winning the Big 12 in 98 every other conference title they’ve won has been in a conference that no longer exists. Furthermore, they haven’t been a national threat since before WWII. Manziel gave them some nice exposure, but he’s gone and as it stands they are currently the 4th best college football team in their own state.
Gig that.
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OK. I concede they weren’t very good for several years after WWII (though great right before it), but to say they’ve been no good in all the time since is wrong. Since 1974, confining ourselves to P5 teams to get rid of some of your objections, and going by winning percentage to assuage your other objections, A&M stands 17th. The only programs in that time period that were more than 5 % points better were Ohio State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, FSU, Bama, Michigan, Penn State, Georgia, and Florida. And yes, they are currently only the 4th highest rated team in their state, but what a state! Furthermore, of the Texas teams rated higher than them, only TCU has clearly outperformed them in recent years. A&M’s future is bright once they get the right coach in there.
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And getting back to your original question “what is their tradition when it comes to actually winning football games at an elite level?”, they are 23-0 against TCU since 1974. Winning percentages against some other major programs in that time span are: Baylor 76.3, Louisville 75, Clemson 66.6, Houston 65, Auburn 60, Michigan 50, VA Tech 50, Florida 50, Texas 50, LSU 47.1, Notre Dame 40, Oklahoma 36.8. So they do have a tradition of winning games against very good programs.
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I think Missouri is “3/5ths” Southern
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Only thing worse than adding two mediocre Big 12 teams was adding a sub-par ACC cast-off with no TV market.
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SC?
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I prefer to call them Sackerlina
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+5
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My goodness the 2nd half turn-around by FSU was astonishing! Ole Miss had receivers running around so open they got lonely in the first half. Kelly was so bored he purposely chose the tougher throws for touchdowns rather than the more open players. Then they come out and it all goes to hell. I trust Mel Tucker will take great notes from that game and know the solution, although I believe it will take a great push by our DL and some creative blitz packages to work…didn’t see that much vs. UNC.
And what happened to the OM DL after the half? They were dominating the line in the first half, then lost their push (other than some hard shots on the QB) in the 2nd half. Truly no idea what to make of that meltdown.
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The answer is self inflicted wounds. Ole Miss became a turnover machine in the second half. Easy scores on a short field. We should all be familiar with the feeling since we did it so well at UT. The turnovers demoralized the defense and ended their dominance. All that being said I don’t like our chances against Ole Miss, barring more injuries to their team, they are still bigger and faster than us. Besides Kirby’s defenses haven’t exactly worked well against them for the last two years.
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The sec east was a shitshow last year, and has been on a continuous downward trend for at least half a decade. With players like Gurley, Murray, Jarvis, Chubb, etc., why we haven’t taken advantage of this situation is inexcusable. Kirby couldn’t have found a more favorable environment for success.
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