CBS has selected games for the first two weeks of the SEC football season and four other games later in the fall. Given the unique circumstances of this season, the SEC requested that its television partners make advanced game selections where possible prior to the start of the season to assist the Conference and schools with planning and logistics. For any games not chosen before the start of the season, the normal 12- or six-day selection process will be used during the season.
No real surprises there, including the ‘Bama-Georgia game on prime time.
Leach’s introduction to the SEC (as a head coach, anyway) ought to be fun while it lasts.
Get The Picture 
Here’s the thing about Leach, though, Senator: All those things the media keeps perpetuating about Sideshow Dan the Clown that aren’t true? Well they are true about Leach.
His teams have snuck up to beat top-10 teams in the past. He is an actual offensive genius and innovator.
Don’t write off MSU against LSU straight away. Bo Pelini has been known to throw up a stinker or two as a defensive coordinator. It’s the first game of a weird season. LSU is missing their offensive wonder boy. Leach’s offense, while deceptively simple, is like preparing for the Fish Fry’s flexbone triple option, but in the other direction. Meaning it’s not easy.
I could see MSU and Leach winning a shootout.
LikeLike
MSU’s defense is hot garbage. Even with the personnel losses, LSU has enough to score plenty on them. And they’ve still got a formidable defensive secondary.
Line is something like 18. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t say it was going to happen, just that I could see it happening. Mike Leach can surprise. I just hope it’s not against us this season.
LikeLike
Just an FYI:
By my count The Pirate is 1-6 against Top 10 teams over the last ten years. His lone Top 10 win in that span came in 2017, at home, against No. 5 USC.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did I say last 10 years? I could’ve sworn I said career.
LikeLike
I didn’t mean it as an absolute refutation of what you said. That’s why I said “FYI”….
Speaking of which, here’s another FYI: The fact that you think he holds the potential for “surprise” based on his “career” doesn’t negate the fact that he hasn’t “surprised” much against Top 10 teams in the last ten years.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Leach is fun, and will be a great addition to the SEC, but you also have to realistically balance the excitement Leach will add to the SEC-W with the amount of practice time his team had in the new system. I bet Leach will have a surprise upset or two later in the season, but without a spring practice under their belt, it is hard for me to see an upset in week 1.
LikeLike
The spring practice angle is overblown because of all the extra time everyone has gotten for Fall Practice. It’s practically erased the disadvantage of not having Spring Practice for everyone.
LikeLike
Mike Leach is a mouth-breathing ignoramus. He’ll win one he shouldn’t, but he’ll also lose 2 he shouldn’t. Leach will perpetually be battling Kiffin for who will finish 5-7 or 6-6. In the long run, it won’t matter for MSU, which hasn’t won the SEC since FDR was president.
LikeLike
Yeah, keep dismissing Mike Leach, a coach who actually does do less with more (unlike some other coaches we know), whose gone to football wastelands in Lubbock and Pullman and managed to field 10-win teams at each destination, winning a few versus top-10 teams.
Say, how’s Texas Tech been since they allowed Craig James (killed a hooker) to have Leach fired? Any 10-win teams out there in Lubbock since Leach left?
Yep. Keep dismissing Mike Leach. He’ll keep proving you wrong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All that being said though, he DID kill a hooker!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I thought that was Craig James. Who got pissed off at Leach for locking his kid in a closet and calling him a pussy when he said he had a concussion. Or am I thinking of something else?
LikeLike
If that’s what you think that is the extent of what happened between Mike Leach and Adam and Craig James, you are woefully misinformed.
LikeLike
I remember that much of it. I also remember Craig James coming off as a vindictive dickhead and liking Mike Leach for telling him to stick it in his… ear.
I don’t have enough space left on the device to carry any more info than that.
LikeLike
Long story short:
Adam James didn’t have a concussion, he was a serial malingerer who was barely 3rd string and angry he wasn’t starting.
Craig James was a classic helicopter parent who got his kid out of every bit of trouble since the time he was in elementary school with his money and “Don’t you know who I am,” BMOC attitude.
The kid literally had no chance because he never suffered any consequences for his actions growing up. His dad made them disappear.
So when Adam James got to the first team and first coach where he had to earn a spot his daddy couldn’t buy for him, and he wouldn’t put in the work and he got told “No” for the first time in his life, he made his coaches and teammates’s football lives as unbearable as he could. You know those kind of people. We all do.
He fabricated the concussion, he set everything up, and then daddy did what he always did, came in to clean up Adam’s mess and Texas Tech, which just gave Leach a huge contract, used it all as a reason to fire Leach. Craig James thought he’d have the people on his side because of his ESPN platform and glory days at SMU, however, Craig James was such an unbearable asshole and all of Adam’s teammates came out to say how much they hated him and what a liar he was, that it all turned sour quickly.
Mike Leach would’ve won his defamation suit if the Texas courts weren’t, well, as packed and as corrupt as any courts in any state. His case was clear.
LikeLike
Craig James ran for the US Senate in Texas maybe about a decade ago. Billy Packer told a story on the Packer-Durham radio show. He almost didn’t get through the story he was laughing so hard. James was given the results of a voter poll and questioned how he could be rated do low. The answer was, ‘Craig, not many people know who you are, and the ones that do, don’t like you.”
LikeLike
“it won’t matter for MSU, which hasn’t won the SEC since FDR was president.”
Someone should ask the Pirate why he likes Roosevelt
LikeLike
Hmm.. What has Leach ever done? Has he ever even won a conference title? I mean, he is credited as one of the Air Raid inventors. Ok, that’s nice. But has he actually won anything that has ever mattered??
LikeLike
Just looked it up. He has won two divisional in his lifetime. And those were 10 years apart.
I gotta be honest, I don’t see him as some coaching genius. If he is, then his record sure as shit doesn’t prove it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s because context and nuance are dead in this world.
Everything the media claims is true about Sideshow Dan the Clown, but actually isn’t when you look at the results, is actually true about Mike Leach.
Again, please tell me how Texas Tech has been since Mike Leach left Lubbock. How many winning seasons? How many bowl games? How many 10-win seasons.
Lubbock was a football ghost town before Leach showed up, and when he was unceremoniously fired based on a vile lie by a malcontent and the malcontent’s father, they went back to being a football ghost town.
Same with Pullman. For a decade, nothing good happened as Wazzu. Leach signs on board, and suddenly they’re relevant again. They even have their first 10-win season in over a decade again. They build new facilities and renovate the stadium.
Again, you people who discount what Leach does at the places he’s been lack all concept of nuance and context.
There’s a reason why the one coach who legitimately would’ve scared me at Tennessee would’ve been Mike Leach. It’s because Mike Leach can take Tennessee’s shortfalls (no good in state recruiting) and still could’ve won there. Pruitt doesn’t scare me. He’ll get Tennessee to 8 wins a year and stick there. Leach would’ve had some years where he’d win 10 games and seriously contend for a division.
He’ll be a thorn in the big boys sides at MSU. Far more than Sideshow Dan the Clown ever was (seriously, look at that guy’s SEC record at MSU if you want a laugh… Jackie Sherrill’s was better, for example).
LikeLike
But, but, MSU was #1 that one time in the CFP!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re doing so much Mike Leach dick-riding, you’re making Mrs. Leach jealous!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am gonna be really depressed if this doesn’t happen. Am I too optimistic to believe we seem now to be leaning toward it actually becoming a reality?
If we beat Auburn, it’s going to be hard to focus leading up to Alabama in week three. I feel about Alabama like I used to feel about Florida–are we ever going to be able to get over that hump? One difference, though, is I never thought we were even close most of the time against Florida during Spurrier-Zook-Meyer. Wouldn’t it be great to give them a long deserved loss on a Saturday night early in the season? It would be all gravy after that no matter what!
LikeLike
I honestly don’t understand thinking the season won’t happen. At this point, it’s literally just the media narrative taking total control while ignoring the rest of reality around us. Football will be played. Baseball isn’t being played in a bubble and MLB is chugging along, and these kids are far more “protected” than baseball players. Same with golf.
We’ve already had a game. We have games this week and this weekend. Football will be played. There will be a season. Why? Because CASES!!! don’t matter. It’s literally a meaningless statistic at this point, especially when it comes to people 25 and under, and I think people are starting to realize that. The CDC recently revealed a dirty truth the media’s been trying to hide for months about covid-19, that all the doomsayers tried to ignore, but now, under the cold light of day, you can go find it for yourself. Basically, it boils down to the fact that healthy people under the age of 60 years old have no statistical reason to worry about covid-19.
The sun is shining. Football will be played. It’s okay.
LikeLike
I feel better. We gonna beat Alabama? If so, I’ll feel a whole lot better!
LikeLike
I think we get at least 1 W vs Bama this year…
LikeLike
Will take that win…(for now), kinda’ surprised UGA Oct. 3rd game didn’t make the schedule, a&m vs bammers feels like a snooze fest…
LikeLike
So Mickey can’t be far behind on other gametimes, then, eh?
LikeLike
Quick stab: Arky at noon/early, Auburn at night, Tennessee at night, Kentucky at night, Mizzou at noon/early…
LikeLike
Sounds about right…
LikeLike
Pretty good. Though, I will say, I could easily see the Arkansas game at night, but on SECN instead of ESPN 2.
LikeLike
We were both wrong about Arky:
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice.
LikeLike
GATA
LikeLike
Surprised to see those noon choices for week one. I honestly think Kentucky at Auburn will be competitive so I hate to have it and a preview of the Gators on at the same time, but DVR to the rescue!
Gators kicking off at noon first two weeks… what does that say?
LikeLike
Agree on Ky vs the barn…
LikeLike
Maybe they spread the games out with there being less inventory. Why punish us with noon start times when over the 3(at least) networks they can spread em out?
I looked at the schedule for the first weeks (prior to SEC) and Tech has two of the better games. Not because I like Tech but rather to see how bad it can get for Geoff.
LikeLike
This is a great point, Siskey. Who wants to bet the Sun Belt will get a lot of those 12pm slots on ESPN and ESPN2 this season, that would’ve gone to lesser SEC, ACC, or Big-12 games.
Good national exposure for a G5 conference that plays some good football, while moving the better teams into the mid afternoon and evening.
The one thing I’ll miss this season more than anything will be Pac-12 After Dark. I loved watching football from 0900 and the start of Gameday all the way through 0200 and College Football Final.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I will say that for me, I love having a noon SEC game. Those are the teams I care most about, so just having a solid wall of SEC games across the day is preferable to me.
And yes, Pac-12 After Dark will be missed; but I’m at the age now where I am tapped out by midnight anyway.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hope springs from an unexpected place
LikeLiked by 1 person
Shit, what happens if BYU goes undefeated?
LikeLike
I like it. Should be a good game. Lots of 4th quarter wackiness after midnight!
LikeLike
Should the 2020 season (?) finish plus what should be an uptick in viewership for college football = $$$$$$, does cbs reconsider a proposal for the saturday afternoon sec game…or take the monie$ and run
LikeLike
I think the deal is done..
LikeLike
Speaking of Leach, by the time we face him in Sanford, are we more likely to have seating capacity set at zero, or at 40-45%?
Don’t cop out and say it stays at 20
LikeLike
I think it stays. We only have four home games this season (FOUR!!!), so there’s really not the opportunity to see the number move much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Funny. I read this and the music intro was playing in my head.
Thanks for update
LikeLike