Fourth and Dumb

Scuttle all over the internet tubes tells us that USC is going to hire Lane Kiffin. To be their FOOTBALL COACH!!!!

Just yesterday I was reading on the Gator Country forums a series of posts mocking the Vol Nation for posting their worries about their new coach getting stolen back by the Trojans, as if USC would be happy to get a guy who led a 7-6 team and got his program into all kinds of hot water!

Well, so much for the USC dynasty. But what about the hatred stirred up in Saban, Miles, Meyer, and Spurrier? Only one year of satisfaction? Weak. And it’s not like they’ll get to play his team in any BCS bowls, either.

And now Tennessee fans: wish you had Phat Phil back around now? Wide receivers coach Kippy Brown as interim isn’t going to make many recruits excited!

Before we get to the game, let us pause to mourn the end of the career (at UT, anyway) of Nu’Keese Richardson, who, along with scrub Mike Edwards, has been forever cast out of Knoxville. Oddly, Janzen Jackson is still there, so there must be something to the story we’re not getting yet (maybe he didn’t threaten anyone with a pellet gun?). But Gators everywhere are thankful to Lane Kiffin for taking Nuke from us. Thanks, Kiffy!

Adding to Kiffy’s tough week was the most interesting SEC development from this past weekend:  the long-awaited awakening of the Ole Miss offense we thought was going to play like this all year. Jevan Snead completed passes short and long, and Dexter McCluster gashed the Vols. Ole Miss may be rolling now, just in time to whip on LSU, but far too late to salvage its sky-high preseason hopes.

Georgia won a scorefest over Auburn, meaning the PlainsTigers have won only one game, against a non-conference foe, since I joined their bandwagon at the end of September and started predicting great things. You’re welcome, TigerEagles! But at least you’re bowl eligible.

The Gators continued to show that they are morphing into the Alabama team of 1961, grinding out games with running and defense. But that team won a national title, and I still think the Gators will do so (sure, I’m biased, what of it?). It’s a cliche, but right now the Gators really don’t seem that interested in their games. The offense putzes around, knowing the defense will mostly destroy people. No matter Pope Urban’s lectures about taking each game seriously, right now you have to figure the Gators players are sleeping and eating Alabama.

Speaking of the Tide, they efficiently rolled up the Other Bulldogs from Miss State and now get a scrimmage with UT-Chattanooga before heading to their showdown with the cow college kids from the Plains. Bama’s too focused to lose that game, but it’s a rivalry, so it might be interesting.

By now you’ve probably heard that three Tennessee freshman football players are being charged with ARMED ROBBERY! One of the three is scrub Mike Edwards, but the other two are starting safety Janzen Jackson and WR Nu’Keese Richardson, whom you might remember from last spring as the kid who’d been orally committed to Florida for over a year before shocking folks on signing day by picking UT. Why the shock? Remember, this is the kid who lied to UF and the media for a couple weeks after visiting UT at the urging of Lane Kiffin, who didn’t want Florida to know their recruit was jumping ship.

Well, I don’t reckon the Gators are missing Nuke right now. Damn, don’t those kids know how to get the “no-work” jobs from boosters like other CFB players? Sheesh.

College players often get in trouble for petty thefts and stupid assaults and other such garbage (not too much different from regular college students, really), but this is pretty serious–one of them had a gun. This could be it for all three players, and it doesn’t help Kiffy’s already-tarnished image much.

One game clearly dominates the consciousness of fans deeply interested in the sriracha-slathered chicken vindaloo that is the Southeastern Conference. And no, I’m not talking about the fascination with whether it will be Carlos Dunlap or Jermaine Cunningham who will tear the first limb from Mackenzi Adams’s body in Hogtown today.

No, of course I’m talking about the epic LSU at Alabama clash in Tuscaloosa. Amazingly, despite their recent offensive woes, Bama is favored by 11 as of this morning. That seems very high to me: I’d be happy to go offshore and bet on LSU to cover, but I’m not confident enough to say they’ll win (sorry, Ricky!). I’m thinking this game will see  a number of field goal attempts and a fair amount of punts, and as I averred in my picks, the team that wins will make at least one game-turning play on defense. Julio Jones has barely touched the ball lately (hmm, wishing maybe you’d chosen the Gators now, Julio?), and the Tide needs to stretch the field a little to beat LSU. What’s that you say? Florida ground out a safe win against the Tigers by running it? True, but UF ran it with the QB and three RBs coming out of various sets, with emphasis on misdirection and option stuff. The Tide doesn’t do much of that: they’re Ingram left, Ingram right, and Ingram up the middle. That seems to me to play to the Tigers’ strengths in the front seven. This game will be close by Mount Cody or somebody will make a play to win for Bama.

The Gators will keep up their recent offensive awakening against Vanderbilt. The story line for the Gates is coming clear: early struggle, an injury to their messianic leader, controversy over various small sins (like eye poking), but eventual redemption with love (Urban for Timmy, Timmy for Brandon, Brandon for Stamper, etc.) conquers all. The melodrama that has been the 09 Gators will culminate in Atlanta after they score 30+ in every game in November.

South Carolina and Arkansas have pivotal games against each other, but the greater pressure is certainly on Arkansas at home. The Pigs are 3-5, with a game at LSU left; if we count that as a loss, that means they have to win every other game on the slate to get bowl eligible. The toughest of those three is today (the others are home games against Troy and Miss State). Arkansas’s offense is clearly far better than SC’s, but the reverse is true on defense. And Stephen Garcia has been yo-yo-like in his inconsistency. Though I’ll be rooting for the ‘Cocks (I will always love the SpurDog above all coaches–he is my master and role model), I think Arkansas will put up too many points to lose.

The rest of the slate is directional and non-conference foes for everyone else. Just one thing: watch for Tennessee to struggle, at least for the first half, with Memphis, who has played them tight the last few years. But of course Hello Kiffy will come through.

Some interesting things happened in the Nathan’s-foot-long-slathered-in-Sriracha sauce-and-jalapenos-and-sauerkraut that is the world’s greatest football conference, the SEC, this past Halloween weekend.

 However, the Florida-Georgia game really wasn’t one of them, unless of course you’re specifically a fan of either team. The Gators finally had a game in which they didn’t turn the ball over three or more times, and consequently they rolled the Dawgs up 41-17. Riley Cooper did make the best catch I’ve seen this year, hauling in his second TD with one hand while leaping forward, and there has since been the excitement of learning that Brandon Spikes decided to test the vision of a Georgia RB by sticking his fingers deep into his eyes (earning him a first-half suspension versus Vandy—I hope the Gators can hold off back-up Commodore QB Mackenzi Adams for two quarters!). But otherwise things went as most expected.

 A bigger surprise, maybe, occurred at Jordan-Hare, where Auburn “beat hayell outta the Rebs” (as PlainsTigers might say). Was there a more overrated team this year than Ole Miss? I, for one, was certainly guilty of thinking they would be a serious threat in the SEC West (um, did I pick them to win? Crap.), as on paper they seemed to have good reasons to be better offensively than they were in ’08. But Jevan Snead suddenly seems to make lots of bad decisions, and Dexter McCluster just isn’t gashing folks like he did last year. Maybe the UF and Texas Tech games last year fooled me, or maybe the Houston Nutt effect only works for a year. Either way, Auburn looked good and may be back on track for a 7-8 win season and decent bowl. Hey, Chizik has already won more games this year than he did in two up at Iowa State!

 The ‘Cocks were limp and lifeless on Halloween night, dribbling the ball onto the ground on the third play and then turning it over two more times in the next four possessions, keeping them from the kind of penetration they needed to embed the football in the soft and fecund soil of the end zone (Gah, will these moronic references never end???). “Hello Kiffy” got his fourth win with four to go, and that game at Oxford against the Rebs is hardly looking unwinnable right now, so he’s going to get the Vols into a bowl. I’d say more about this game, but I was handing out candy by then, wearing a prosthetic to make it look like my right eye had been enucleated, but unfortunately that’s my good eye, and coupling that with a lot of beer and tequila meant I was legally and morally blind by then. Fortunately, it spared me the ugly of UT’s black jerseys.

 Still under the radar, Miss State got new coach Dan Mullen a good road win at Kentucky, putting the Other Bulldogs at 4-5 with games against Bama and Ole Miss at home sandwiched around a trip to Fayetteville to play the Razorpigs. If he gets them to a bowl, he’s the NCAA coach of the year in my book.

This week’s games in the world’s greatest football conference, that Southeastern one, will offer much insight into the final jockeying for bowl position which will take place in November. Though there are no blockbuster match-ups, there are some very interesting games to the discerning aficionado of Southern pigskin.

To wit, South Carolina at Tennessee, the best game of the weekend. Kiffin’s flap with the Spurdog was less exciting than those he had with Pope Urban and Nick Satan, but expect to hear a bit about it on Gameday and during the gamecast. In case you forgot, Spurrier said that Kiffin may have been recruiting SC commits before Kiffin took his NCAA recruiting test, a requirement before recruiting, and Kiffin said he didn’t. Then Spurrier contemptuously told Kiff he never accused him of cheating in front of a pack of reporters and a (reportedly) bemused Bobby Petrino and Rich Brooks at the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida.

Anyway, the game itself is clearly the most important game of the season for Kiffin. Despite his “moral victories,” no one expected him to beat Bama or Florida this year, so he can bask in the glow of close games there. Likewise, he got his one big win this year by pounding Georgia. So why is this game so big for him? Well, UT is 3-4. His team will be favored and expected (by Vols fans) to beat Memphis and Vandy at home, while a roadie at Ole Miss will be an acceptable loss by most fans. If this comes true, that equals 5-5, with this game and the later roadie at Kentucky being the deciding factors for the Vols’ bowl eligibility this year. More important, Vols fans expect to compete with Florida (and most years, Georgia) for the SEC East, so even in this first season, they expect Kiffin to put the Vols ahead of the lower half of the division. If Kiffin really wants to get the fans behind him, he has to win this game at home. However, I think the ‘Cocks defense will be too stiff for the Vols’ running game, and the Spurdog will win a low-scoring, ugly game.

Ole Miss’s trip to Auburn is likely the game for third place in the SEC West. Ole Miss’s season kind of reminds me of Florida’s—they’ve made a lot of mistakes in close games, but unlike the Gators, they haven’t been talented enough, especially on defense, to survive those mistakes. Like the Gators, Ole Miss is due for a big offensive game. However, it won’t come in Jurdin-Hayer, where those cow college PlainsTiger fans will be in full throat. Still, Ole Miss will win a close one.

Florida-Georgia doesn’t have the luster of last year’s “Urban’s Revenge” game, but the Gators are still trying to get juice out of Georgia’s end zone dance of two years ago. This is pretty lame: the Gators just need to start acting like the pros that most of them are going to be. The Gators’ failures this season have been due to execution: they’ve often forgotten how to block and hold on to the ball. Fortunately, the defense has been as good as advertised (though not in the realm of the all-time greats, as Brandon Spikes had boastfully predicted before the season). Better for the Gators, they get Spikes back for this game, along with three (!) regulars from the D-line who didn’t play last week. Expect the Gators to put it together this week and actually score over thirty while holding the dogs to less than 17.

I think Kentucky will handle a game Miss State team at home, while the student-ATHLETES of Georgia Tech will pound the STUDENT-athletes of Vanderbilt. Jordan Jefferson will look all-world against the Tulane defense. Ryan Mallett will throw for six TDs against Eastern Michigan, one of which will come with him holding up a D-lineman in his left arm while throwing a 97-yard pass with his right. Satan will spend the entire day huddled in his dark lair, chuckling at footage of the LSU passing game. I will drink a dwarfsweight of Red Stripe before trick or treating with my daughter and then catching the last three quarters of the Oregon game. As Pippa put it in Browning’s great poem, “God’s in his heaven/All’s right with the world.”

The revelation of feet of clay was the major theme of the eighth week in the veil of tears that is the world’s greatest football conference.

Alabama got all of seven days as the new darlings of AP voters. The giant paws of Mount Cody saved their asses from an embarrassing loss to Mr. Moral Victory, Lane Kiffin. And all I heard for the last two days is how impressed we should all be with what Lane’s got building there in Knoxville. But please, let me call bullshit on that. The defense up there is very good, what with Monte’s coaching and Eric Berry’s presence, but the offense, the Georgia game somehow notwithstanding, is wretched. Can we all just remember for a second that A) Florida gave Tennessee a bunch of turnovers and played as conservative as Grover Norquist but the Vols still were never a threat to win, and B) Alabama was up 12-3 with three minutes to go before having a bad turnover at the wrong time and then giving up an onside kick. Neither game was REALLY that close, though obviously the Bama game really could’ve been a loss for the Tide but for Cody’s block, but that was due to the crazy stuff at the finish–for the entire rest of the game Tennessee couldn’t get a first down with six tries.

I’m not saying Lane won’t get them better; heck, he’s recruiting like a demon. But he’s got a ways to go, and I’m still betting against him getting the Vols bowl-eligible this year.

Anyway, Bama didn’t deserve to be demoted for winning an SEC game, just like the Gators didn’t need to get demoted after last week’s near miss versus Arkansas. But so it goes with today’s voters, who seem to think that the top teams have to win bigger to satiate their hype.

Speaking of hype, the Gators looked like warmed-over vomit on offense in Starkville on Saturday. First and goal at the three? What do you have, new OC Steve Addazio (keeping in mind you want to impress the last OC, Dan Mullen, who’s coaching against you)? Hey, how about throwing Tebow into the line three straight times? Sure, I bet Dan Mullen can’t recognize that blocking scheme! Really, the Gators’ offense has gotten as stagnant as Donald Rumsfeld’s boxers. Some questions most Gator fans have:

What happened to the talk of running CB Joe Haden as a wildcat option? (Or Brandon James or any of the RBs?)

Why don’t we hand off more when we’re in the Red Zone? (The Gates have converted two TDs in their last 15 trips, both on hand offs to RBs).

What happened to the talk of getting back-up QB John Brantley meaningful snaps? As he’s a much better pure passer than Timmy, wouldn’t he be a good change of pace for a couple series a game (or maybe even in the Red Zone?).

All I know is that when watching the game replay Sunday morning, I saw a number of plays with WRs seemingly open and waving at Tebow like Sevastopol hookers at the latest boatload of Greek stevedores (that’s for you, Charles Meigs!), while Timmy, under pressure, would tuck and pick up two yards. Still, all this talk of the Gators’ problems is a bit premature. They’ve done everything in their power to give teams a chance to beat them, but they haven’t been able to do so yet (and don’t give me the stuff about bad calls; Doe’s potential fumble wasn’t nearly as clear cut as everyone seems to think–if a replay has to be clearly conclusive to overturn the call on the field, I don’t see how people can be so emphatic about it, as it’s not clear that Doe dropped the ball before the tip crossed the white line of the end zone). And sooner or later they’ll take care of the ball for a whole game, and they’ll win by 17 or 20. But neither they nor Bama are teams that are going to crest 40 points very often this year, if ever. And right now the SEC Championship Game is shaping up to be straight out of 1928, a 8-6 affair with lots of blood and bits of bone on the field.

Meanwhile, South Carolina just keeps hanging around, just like the conference’s Big Two. They eked one out against Vandy, and now they’ll get Tennessee, in what should be an interesting game: the late 20th-century’s most hated coach in the South vs. the 21st-century’s most hated coach in the South. The over-under ought to be around 16.

Oh, and LSU also may be back on the uptick. They nicely pushed around Auburn, even showing some signs of offense with Jordan Jefferson. And it’s easy to forget that they still control their destiny with regards to the SEC title, and hence, perhaps even with the national title. If they can beat Bama in a couple weeks and then beat UF in a rematch, they’d be 12-1 and SEC champs, hard to deny a spot in Pasadena unless we still have Texas, Iowa, and Cincinnati all still undefeated (not to mention those petty sinks that DanGr’s always going on about).

Oh, and there were some other games in the conference, too, but you can look ‘em up on ESPN or something.

For the second week in a row, there are no really big games in the chili-slathered, Nathan’s foot-long that is the Southeastern Conference, but there are some intriguing games nonetheless. To wit:

Arkansas travels to Oxford to play Ole Miss. Can Ole Miss get back up off the mat and at least fight for second in the SEC West? Maybe. On the one hand you’d think that Jevan Snead can move the ball on Arkansas’s D, but on the other that Razorpig D nutted up and slowed the Gators last week. But then again, can Arkansas get up for another tough roadie after their oh-so-close loss to the Gators? I say no: Ole Miss wins by 3-4.

Lane Kiffin weighed in a few days, saying that Alabama is the “best-coached team” in the SEC and is the “clear” #1 team in the nation. Is this just more of Lane’s weird habit of kissing the ass of the powerhouse he’s about to play (cf his comments a few days before the Gator game that UF should be favored by 100 points), or is he just gigging Urban Meyer now that the Gators’ loss is in his rearview mirror? Well, if it’s the former, don’t bother: Nick Satan doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, and he’s going to punish the Vols. Will Lane’s anger over being peremptorily disallowed from wearing orange on the road be enacted in a stirring effort by his team to beat the Tide? No.  Bama wins by 17.

Can Auburn look the way they did in the first couple weeks during their trip to Death Valley in Baton Rouge? Lately it seems like they’ve forgotten how to play pass defense, but fortunately for them, Jordan Jefferson can’t pass! Still, LSU isn’t going to let the PlainsTigers score many points. LSU wins by 4.

Tim Tebow gets to visit with his mentor and friend, Dan Mullen, when the Gators go to Starkville. The last time the Gates actually won there was the year before I began matriculating in Gainesville: 1985. Since then Miss State has been a graveyard of good Gator teams. And every single time it didn’t appear possible UF could lose. But really, it’s not possible UF can lose this game. Right? I mean, really? Anyway, I think the Gators win by 22. But I’ll be hitting the Patron early to calm my nerves, especially if the Gators start putting the ball on the floor early, as they have the last couple games.

South Carolina will let Stephen Garcia loose against Vandy and will win big.

The biggest news of the fifth weekend in the world’s greatest college football conference came from its dullest game, Florida’s 41-7 victory over Kentucky, 31/48 of the total points of which came in the first 15 minutes. Of course the news was the bonk on Tim Tebow’s noggin, which was truly horrifying for all Gator fans. Seeing Tim’s blank face on the sideline brought home just how serious a head trauma he took.

Of course, now we know he seems mostly fine, though he’s going to sit all of this week and may not be cleared to start against LSU on October 10, but most of us are betting he will. Now that he’s mostly well, though, it’s worth noting that the Gators can now proclaim another title: CFB’s pukiest team. Timmy joined his roommate Riley Cooper in being shown on national TV barfing; Coop planted some green-looking yams after running a couple long outs against Charleston Southern. Mmmmm.

Miss State nearly shocked the world by taking down LSU. If the Tigers are giving up 26 points to MSU (and if Tyson Lee really stretches on fourth down, they’d have given up 33 and the win), they’re in trouble. This week they get to play the REAL Bulldogs, the ones for whom Joe Cox is making people forget that dude who’s playing for the Lions now. They might give up 40+ to Georgia between the hedges.

Alabama’s defense really locked down mega-man Ryan Mallett and Arkansas. I think an argument could easily be made that Alabama has been the best team in the country over this third of the season, led by a stout D and an offense which is keeping McElroy methodical and in management of games.

Arizona State’s defense showed it was for real against the Dawgs, but Cox came through with a nice drive when he had to, getting field position for the winning FG. Georgia is finding a good offensive rhythm; if they had made another play or two versus Okie State, they’d be sitting in the top five right now. As it is, they might get in after beating LSU this weekend, provided we see some upsets like we have the last couple weeks.

Nobody else played anybody really worth commenting on, but I can’t help but point out that Tennessee nearly gave up as many points at home to Ohio as they did to the Gators in the Swamp. I think Lane’s daddy could’ve spent some of the off-season looking at video of other teams, couldn’t he?

Just a few minutes before I take the wife and kid to a friend’s to watch the USF-FSU game of dyslexia. But I didn’t want to leave our loyal fans without my sage predictions for the fourth week in the world’s greatest conference of football:

There’s a top three offense (Arkansas) going against a top three defense today in Tuscaloosa. The Razorbacks are going to give the Tide all they can handle today, but Bama’s defense is too good to let Zeus-like Ryan Mallett to throw his lightning bolts all over them. Bama gets two picks wins 27-23.

Miss State will slow it down and slog it out, as they always do, against the Bayou Tigres in Starkville. Still, even Jordan Jefferson can get some first downs against the “athletes” Miss State rolls out on defense. LSU wins 23-10 after a close first half.

Arizona State currently has a top 20 defense statistically, but they haven’t played anybody. The Dawgs hang 40+ on the Scum Devils between the hedges and knock them out of the nation’s statistically best D’s.

I just heard that Jesus didn’t protect Timmy from getting a respiratory infection, but at least it’s not the flu that so many other Gators are suffering. Brandon Spikes is fighting some nasty tendinitis in his heel, and I heard a doctor say this week that the overcompensating that people do with such injuries can lead to a ruptured achilles, so I hope that Charlie Strong doesn’t make him play much today. Kentucky’s not the pushover they used to be, but the Gators will get their 23rd straight against the ‘Cats by something like 33-13.  I just don’t think the Gator offense is going to be destroying too many people this year, but they’ll grind it out again.

The other games mostly suck. Tennessee fans will feel good about themselves for beating Ohio, and Auburn will crush Ball State. Next week we’ll learn something about Auburn when they go to Tennessee, where I predict they’ll give Kiffin another “moral victory.”  Oh, and don’t be surprised if Rice’s bizarre triple option gets the win over Vanderbilt.

Let the cheddar burst out of the wurst and the Red Stripe flow like the milk of paradise!