For years the SEC has been the most yellow bellied conference of them all, scheduling cupcakes out of conference, drubbing them, and then beating their chest about how great they are. The press was completeley complicit, fawning and building them up in an effort to line their own pockets with readers and viewers. During these same years the ACC has often taken on more tough opponents, especially early in the season and suffered much of the same results that the SEC had this year. During those years, the narrative was always how mediocre the ACC was and undeserving of respect. It will be interesting to see how the press spins the results of week one, 2016.
Personally, I applaud the SEC for scheduling the games, just as I have recognized the ACC doing so in the past. I fully recognize that the SEC has played a tougher slate than we have in the infancy of this season. There is still one game to go for each, a "head to head" match up, oddly enough. Let's root for "free shoes" even though it hurts a little. I say this mostly because, ONCE AGAIN, the press has jumped in there and inflated the SEC before the season ever started, blessing them with wholly undeserved lofty preseason rankings. Lets recap. Shall we? Overall, the SEC has taken 5 losses in their 11 contests this opening week, three of them to "directional" schools. The scary part is, it could have easily been even worse with preseason #9 UT Vowels barely escaping with a victory, at home, over the "Consonants" of Appy State. For all who watched that game, that was an Appy win that just got fouled up and handed over to the vowel faithful. Then there was Arkansas padding their resume with a sliver of a one point, come from behind, home victory over the prestigious LaTech program. I guess the stuff that chaps me the most is the verbage the fawning press chooses to use when an SEC team does go down, such as the "upset" of #5LSU at the hands of Wisconsin. Upset? Are you kidding me? How? First of all, this was the initial game of the season for both teams and the #5 in front of the LSU name is based on nothing but the need to stack the top ten with SEC names, just because. Anybody who watched that game could see that was no upset. Wisconsin was clearly the better and more physical team. They punished LSU for 58 of the 60 minutes, only pausing for 2 minutes to gift wrap a pair of scores for LSU with mishaps deep in their own end.
The good: Bammer 52 - USC 6, UGA 33 - UNC 24, TA&M 31 - UCLA 24
The Blah: UF 24 - UMASS 7, ARK 21 - LATECH 20
The Bad: UT 20 - APPY 13 (OT), WIS 16 - LSU 14, WVU 26 - MISSOU 11, CLEM 19 - AUB 13
The Ugly: South AL 21 - MSST 20, SMISS 44 - UK 35
TBD: Ole Miss vs Free shoes
My friends, the preseason rankings mean nothing. The SEC is, most likely, just the same as they have been in recent years, a very competitive conference, who is simply just over-rated. They took on a real schedule in the early going. Good for them. Welcome to the "real world". I hope they continue to do it and all other conferences as well, for the good of the game. I call for an expansion of the playoff system to include all conference champs and conference champs only.
