At the intersection of “it just means more” and “life comes at you fast”

So, I step away from the computer for a few hours yesterday to run errands, do a few chores around the house, get dinner and come back last night to find all hell has broken loose on the SEC coaching front.  To recap (and I hope this is still accurate):

• Texas A&M shows Kevin Sumlin the door.
• Ole Miss takes the interim label off Matt Luke, naming him its permanent head coach.
• Florida hires Dan Mullen.
• Tennessee manages another coaching hire shit storm.

The Sumlin firing was in the works for a few weeks and comes as no surprise.  He leaves with a handsome golden parachute and rumor has it will be named the new head coach at Arizona State shortly.  Meanwhile, TAMU, is supposedly trying to chase Jimbo Fisher, which is certainly good news for Jimmy Sexton.  Nothing like lots of money and grandiose perceptions of your football program.  Although let’s not lose sight of that part of the fan base that doesn’t care so much about who the next coach is, as long as he’s a white person.

I saw a little Internet criticism about the Ole Miss decision, claiming that it was an emotional overreaction to the Egg Bowl win.  I actually think it may have been the sanest call of the hiring/firing season.  Ole Miss is going to be in a dark place for the next few years, because of NCAA sanctions.  To sign a decent coach in that setting means overpaying at a time when a number of peer programs are chasing coaches.  Why not let Luke hold things together — something he showed this season to be eminently capable of doing — until things settle down and you pass through the sanctions period?  Given that the school didn’t have to pay Freeze a buyout and that Luke is likely to be the conference’s lowest paid head coach during his tenure, Ole Miss will have a stocked war chest when it comes time to move on to the next coach.

That Florida got a solid hire as its third choice says a lot about the program, like it or not.  Mullen comes in knowing the AD, knowing the expectations of the fan base and bringing one thing that the Gators haven’t had since he left, a coach who can develop quarterbacks.  In return, he gets a better recruiting base to work from and gets away from the insanity in Mississippi.  From where I sit it looks like a good match.  Unfortunately from Mississippi State’s vantage, this is your classic one door closes, another one opens situation.

And then… there’s Tennessee, which, after a few days of seeing Greg Schiano’s name floating out there as a potential head coaching candidate, got serious enough with him to negotiate a memorandum of understanding, only to see the whole thing blow up in its face.  Screaming on social media, including Clay Travis’ patented douchebaggery (he posted the AD’s cell phone number on Twitter), politicians lining up to condemn the hire, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders weighing in (apparently she’s more offended by the Penn State sex scandal than Roy Moore), all wound up leading to the school and Schiano agreeing to terminate what once looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I’m not going to get into who’s right and who’s wrong here.  Schiano does come with some baggage, no doubt, and has the reputation of being something of a prick, but he did an excellent job at Rutgers, something that’s a lot harder than it sounds.  He’s also a solid defensive coach.  None of that matters at this point nearly as much as the way events proceeded to get out of hand.  In any event, Currie, the athletic director, has managed to live up to a long tradition at Tennessee of creating dumpster fires out of the hiring process.  Why this wasn’t more thoroughly vetted I’ll never know.  How he goes forward from here — indeed, assuming he’s even allowed to go forward from here — I have no clue.  You’d think Cutcliffe becomes the obvious choice to heal the breach, but that means falling back on a guy who’s in his sixties and, while a terrific coach, is lacking in recruiting prowess, which is kind of a big deal in Knoxville.  What a mess.

You know what the really crazy thing is now?  Boom and Kirby rank as the SEC’s fifth-most senior head coaches at the same school.  This is fine.

First thoughts on the SECCG

[Ed. note: Actually, I have to start with a pre-first thought:  how great is it to be able to pen a post like this again!]

Twelve games in, I hold these two truths to be self-evident.

1. If you can’t match Georgia along both lines of scrimmage, you can’t beat the Dawgs.
2. Auburn doesn’t have that problem.

Okay, fine.  So where does that leave us for Saturday night?  Well, with a bunch of questions for which I am far less sure of the answers.  Here’s a list of what’s already come to mind:

• How much of the debacle from three weeks ago can be attributed to line play, and how much to it being just one of those games?
• How much of a difference will it make to play in Atlanta and not Auburn?
• Does the changed psychology flipping the favorite (in Kirby’s vernacular, Georgia going from the hunted to the hunter) improve Georgia’s chances?
• Assuming that Georgia’s offensive line remains over-matched against Auburn’s defensive line, which I do, how does Jim Chaney effectively scheme around that?
• How does Auburn coach around what might have been the biggest wild-card factor in the first meeting, namely, Mecole Hardman’s return game?
• How much will the injury situation at running back affect Auburn’s offense?
• Can Georgia’s front seven get more pressure on Jarrett Stidham than it did after the first quarter?
• Does the familiarity of playing a rematch in a relatively short time favor either team?
• How much does the return of Natrez Patrick to the starting lineup matter?

Answers:

• A little of both, which means Georgia has an opportunity to make the rematch more of a competitive game.
• A lot, in my mind.
• I hope considerably, but I am somewhat skeptical of that.
• The $64,000 question.
• Another good question.
• It can’t help, but with that offensive line, it won’t be a disaster, either.
• They’d better.
• I always think this situation favors the loser, because it goes in with the mindset that things have to be fixed/changed to win.  Winners, understandably, tend to stand pat with what worked before.
• Before the Tech game, I might have shrugged the question off, but in his first game back as a starting ILB, the defense played noticeably better than it had in weeks.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts and answers.  Lay ’em on me in the comments.

SEC Power Poll, Week 13

Alabama’s loss highlights an observation I’m making for the third consecutive season.

And so, another regular season comes to an end.  This last week made one thing painfully apparent:  this is the most mediocre the SEC has been in years.

The East is remarkably bad.  Sagarin’s gap between his top team in the division, Georgia, and his second-best team, South Carolina, is an astounding 17.16 points.  That’s bigger than the gap between the Gamecocks and Tennessee, his lowest ranked East team.

The West is better, but not enough to overcome the awfulness of its divisional partner.  I’m sure replacing five (at least for the moment) head coaches will have that turned around overnight.

Anyway, here’s my last regular season power poll of 2017.  (I’ll do one more after the playoffs.)  As is my practice with the last shot, I include each team’s net yardage per game number in a weak attempt to offer some context on the conference’s over- and under- achievers.

1. Auburn (+167.0).  Give ’em credit.  The Tigers are the SEC’s hottest team and they’ve done it without having to rely on Gus’ rabbit’s foot.
2. Alabama (+207.6).  The loss didn’t surprise me nearly as much as how poorly the Tide played did.
3. Georgia (+162.8).  The class of the East, and, no, I’m not damning with faint praise there.
4. LSU (+100.4).  The conference’s fourth-best team lost to Troy, at home.  If that doesn’t sum up the state of the SEC, I don’t know what does.
5. Mississippi State (+117.8).  It’s a good thing the Bulldogs get some time off.  They look like they’ve been slowly running out of gas for the past three weeks.
6. Missouri. (+86.2).  Bombed the Hogs into submission, capping off a remarkable recovery after getting spanked by Georgia.  And while it came against a run of teams that won’t make a bowl game, so what?  Mizzou wasn’t going to make one either, until it took off.
7. South Carolina (-34.4).  Boom got eight wins, five in the conference, with a team that finished in the hole in net yardage.  That’s good coaching in my book.
8. Texas A&M (+.09).  Everything about this team shouts average.  Paying $5 million a year for average is how a coach gets canned.
9. Ole Miss. (+2.8).  I thought this team was on the verge of collapse twice this season and both times they pulled back from the abyss.  Given the circumstances, Matt Luke did a helluva job holding the fort at 6-6.
10. Kentucky (-74.9).  This is the team that benefited the most from a weak SEC East.
11. Florida (-13.4).  The Gators were the SEC’s biggest underachiever this season.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
12. Vanderbilt (-42.3).  Not as big a flop as Florida, but, man, did their season turn south after beating Kansas State.
13. Arkansas (-64.9).  The only team in the division underwater in net yardage, and the head coach is getting paid $4+ million a year… what did you expect, Bert?
14. Tennessee (-121.8).  Did Booch’s platitudes make a bad season worse, or did a bad season make Booch’s platitudes seem even dumber?  Either way, the end result is glorious.

Fabris Pool results, Week Thirteen

And so, my friends, another pick ’em season comes to an end.  It wouldn’t be fitting if the last week didn’t end in a tiebreaker.  This one did.

STANDINGS for WEEK 13

Rank	Selection Name	Standings Adjustment	W-L	Pts	Tie Breaker Game 38-22
1	watcher16	Adj	8-2	8	24-10**
1	IHazAFatPencil	Adj	8-2	8	21-20
1	Mark Richts Bookie	Adj	8-2	8	21-14

Congrats to watcher16, who narrowly greased this one out.

Now comes time to crown the seasonal champ.  The race came down to the wire.

SEASON STANDINGS through Week 13

Rank	You	Selection Name	W-L	Pts
1		Biggen	81-49	81
2		83Dawg	79-51	79
3		Meat686	78-52	78
3		mhagan73	78-52	78

Congrats, Biggen! Your name will be engraved on a special plaque mounted in the GTP Hall of Fame, if that ever exists one day.

As I mentioned before, there will be a bowl season pick ’em.  I should have an announcement on that in a couple of weeks or so.  Stay tuned.

Storming your way through the SEC

What a difference a year makes.

• Kickoff average:  7th in 2016; 1st in 2017
• Red zone conversions:  7th in 2016; 1st in 2017
• Opponent red zone touchdown percentage conversions:  14th in 2016; 1st in 2017
• Punting:  14th in 2016; 4th in 2017
• Kickoff returns;  9th in 2016; 2nd in 2017
• Opponent kickoff returns:  12th in 2016; 4th in 2017
• Passer rating:  13th in 2016; 4th in 2017
• 3rd down conversions:  5th in 2016; 1st in 2017

It’s almost like Kirby sat down after last season ended, made a to-do list and then checked off all the boxes on it.

Quick — no peeking!

With Alabama’s loss, which SEC team currently sports the conference’s longest winning streak?

The player formerly known as Roquan

He played so lights out against Georgia Tech — nine tackles, eight solo, with three tackles for loss including a sack –that I’m going to refer to him from now on simply as “R”.

If we measure a man by his pettiness…

… then Corch is the greatest college football coach of our era.

Seriously, does this look like the face of a man who enjoys what he’s doing?

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Trash

I’d say, stay classy, ‘Cock fans, except I expect I’d be wasting bandwidth.

Nick Saban is not happy he has to make time for this shit.

A dour man now faces a situation in which he has to go on a charm offensive, and, judging from this first volley, it’s gonna take a lot of effort on his part.

“I think this team deserves an opportunity to get in the playoff by what they’ve been able to accomplish and what they’ve been able to do,” Saban said after the game. “Certainly not maybe in this game, but I think the team we played tonight is a very good football team, probably one of the best teams in the country.

“They won 11 games, and not many teams are able to do that. I really don’t know what all the scenarios might be where we’d have an opportunity to do it, but I’d certainly like to see this team get an opportunity to do it.”

I mean, really, is this what Nick Saban returned to college football for?

If it doesn’t work — and you’d have to think that if Auburn wins its rematch with Georgia in the SECCG, Alabama’s chances are pretty much toast — which of these alternatives seems the most likely course of action for Nick to take?

• (a) add a full-time PR staff to the support army Saban already has at his disposal to work the media and selection committee non-stop; or
• (b) begin lobbying hard for the playoffs to expand to eight teams

I’m leaning towards (c) both.  Saban is nothing if not thorough.